Joshua Trips
by Kipper Snack
Summary: Joshua trips and accidentally teleports himself and Neku to a bizarre alternate universe where nothing is as it seems. /NOT YAOI/
1. In which Trite Pasttimes are Engaged In

_**JOSHUA TRIPS**_

CHAPTER ONE: IN WHICH NEKU AND JOSHUA ENGAGE IN SILLY, TRITE PASTTIMES

_~ ooh kipper ooh ~_

**DISCLAIMER:** This is a story about Joshua and Neku. This is not a story about Joshua/Neku. Don't worry, the protagonists do not engage in sickening fluff with each other. That would not be manly. This story involves Joshua/Neku, but not between the main characters Joshua and Neku. And besides, it's not exactly Joshua/Neku anyway - so if you're not into that sort of thing, then you're okay. If you are into that sort of thing, then...okay. And if I let either our Joshua or our Neku dissolve into a puddle of buttery goo-stuff anywhere in this fic, then feel free to bonk me into the next plane of existence. As this is my first multiple-chapter story, constructive criticism and stuff is totally wanted.

_~ ooh kipper ooh ~_

EDIT: WELL DAMMIT. I let him turn into butter in THIS VERY CHAPTER and NOBODY TOLD ME? UH? ACTUALLY, THAT STATEMENT IS FALSE - 0re0, man of men, was able to spot the estrogoo contaminating Neku's hideous blood. Yeah this happened a while ago but I had a reason for making him like that, only now, I realize... it was a dumb reason. So I am rewriting the first few chapters to accommodate for this discrepancy oh-so-vile! Hopefully, he's a more acceptable person now! I am so sorry I completely screwed up like a COMPLETE TOOL, jeez I am such a loon.

EDIT 2: did I seriously type the pseudo-word 'stuffs' up there, good lord

_~ ooh kipper ooh ~_

Rating: T for yucky stuff and Neku's potty-mouthiness.

OF NOTE IN THIS CHAPTER: Neku shoves Joshua, who is a cream puff, apparently.

* * *

It was a beautiful sunny day and Neku was pissed.

Neku wasn't good with people, and he'd be the first to admit that. He was blunt, callous, rude, and he did NOT care what Dogenzaka Hill was named after, thank you. But he was trying, dammit, he was! He had read through Friendship for Sociopaths so much, he'd memorized it. It was a good thing he had, too – the book had long since passed the event horizon of disrepair, and it was falling apart at the seams from being read so much.

That wasn't all, though – no, Neku Sakuraba was not the type to spoon up minimal effort when it came to things. He was hardcore, by golly. Had he not scavenged through the bargain bin at the bookstore for Conversation Starters and You: The Beginner's Guide to Opening Up? Had he not gone to those self-help classes? Had he not personally raided Eri's house, ransacking her room for the friendship help guides that all girls seem to come pre-packaged with? Had he not suffered a glorious beating for it, too? (Apparently, it was odd that a teenaged boy would rifle through the lingerie in search of friendship guides.)

During his scouring, Neku had discovered that there seemed to be a constant when it came to friends. The thing about friends is that friends are supposed to stick up for each other; to see each other through to the bitter, bitter end. They are supposed to do things together. They are supposed to enjoy being together. And they are supposed to respect each other's hopes and dreams and most secret wishes – according to his research, at least.

So, after much inner monologue, a lot of pacing and even more muttering to himself, Neku had finally steeled his resolve. He had picked up the lonely box of chalk on his shelf, still virgin to the taste of the pavement, and strode out the door, a never-before-seen passion burning in his cobalt eyes. He was going to ask them. He was.

He did.

They laughed.

Son of a bitch, oh, they LAUGHED.

"Aww, Neku! I never knew you had thuch a... _(snort)_ ...er, _thweet_ side..."

"Shiki, just – pfft! Just look at him! Look! Look at his face! He's... oh, jeez, he's serious? Ehmagawd, I have... I don't... _(snerk) _...ohh... _(snort)_ ...Shiki... help, I'm gonna explode!"

"BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA! Oh, oh, sweet holy mother a' shit, Phones – oh – you wan' me ta do WHAAT? Pla... play _WHAAT?_ Aww, DAMN, man... Pshhhhhh, Phones – pwufttt_AHAHAHAHAHA...!_"

"Um... I'd love to, but uh... my brother... he looks like he's about to have a coronary right now... AND SO AM I TEEHEEHEEHEE...!"

Zetta sons of digits. Neku had spun around on his heel and stomped back off in the direction of Dogenzaka hill, muttering under his breath and hiding his glowing face in his collar. He was blushing so hard, the temperature of the city had been jacked up by about twelve degrees, his only consolation being that somewhere Joshua was probably sweating. What was so funny? What was so friggin' funny about hopscotch?

Hopscotch was serious business for Neku Sakuraba. He didn't think it was funny at all.

So here he was now, slouched over on the top of Pork City, stewing in his juices. His eyes were closed, he had the small box of chalk gripped firmly in his trembling hands, and he was clearly trying very, very hard not to smash the thing in between his quivering palms.

This chalk meant something great. How come they couldn't see that? Let's set something straight, here - Neku wasn't the type to run around and pull cutesy girl behaviours out of his ass. He wasn't a creep. Asking his compatriots to play hopscotch with him was not a typical thing, okay. Neku was not some blue-eyed troll doll of a boy who goggled uselessly after asinine kiddie games. He did not constantly rope in the rest of his posse to play stupid games for girls, all to further his personal metamorphosis from a shut-in to the protagonist of a slice-of-life harem comedy.

Really, the injustice of it all was crippling. Neku just wanted to break something.

He screwed his eyes shut, trying to calm his crazy tits with cold logic. Hey, maybe they were just pulling his leg! Ha ha! Ha!

Damn, they should know him better than that. Neku absolutely loathed being the object of well-meaning mockery and good ol' fashioned ribbin'. Perhaps they weren't as great of friends as Neku had thought. His anger deepened into despair - maybe he was just getting played for a chump by a bunch of assholes? 'Twould be a fate worse than any death conceivable, that.

A sadistic vision presented itself to his mind's eye: himself, with eyes squirting forth absurd amounts of tears, smashing his friends' heads in with a baseball bat while wailing hysterically.

...That seemed a little extreme, so he focused on crushing the chalk box between his hands.

The cardboard crumpled slightly from the pressure, but with a noisy _PAFF_ of chalk dust, it tumbled out of his grip and landed on the ground. Neku glared at it for a minute before losing heart entirely, slumping back against the railing and closing his eyes to the world.

"Gyah-HUH."

The hell...? What was that? It sounded like a cross between a hiccup and a gasp, and Neku would sooner kiss a Wall of Grizzly's butt before he let himself forget who exactly hiccup-gasped in response to surprises, never mind forgive him. Neku's eyes snapped open, already narrowing.

There was the sound of nice shoes scuffing along in a mad rush to get to the stairwell, but Neku beat him to the punch. "Joshua."

He responded in falsetto. "_Actually_, I'm Bridgette, and I came up here for lunch break, but it seems you're having a moment so I'll be off then tally-ho pip-pip -"

"Cut the crap, Josh. I know it's you." Neku sighed raggedly. He was really not in the mood for mind games right now. Nevertheless, Neku shifted his position so he had a clear view of the other boy.

Joshua looked very miffed, to say the least. The boy was shorter and stockier than the gangly Neku, and his Natural Puppy clothes were a few sizes too big and hung slackly on his frame, giving him a slightly rumpled appearance. His lint-colored hair was perfectly awful as usual, a bit longer than last time – which was about a month or two ago – but the usual cowlicks stuck up everywhere, and it was clearly still cut wrong. It looked almost as if Josh had attacked his head with scissors – for the "greater good," presumably.

From their distance of a few meters, his eyes looked dark gray, but Neku knew from careful attention to the Results screen that Joshua's eyes were actually a nice sort of dull violet. They were all screwed up, anyway, and overall he looked pretty perturbed, in the way that people who've just had their winning streak broken do.

His teeth were also kinda crooked.

"Howdy, Neku." Joshua said in his girlish, reedy voice, giving a lax wave in greeting. He folded his arms and eyed the box of chalk. "What'cha got there, partner?"

That was one of Joshua's many annoying habits – talking like a gay cowboy. "Go away."

"Wow, you're _fun_. ...That time of month again already?" Joshua remarked quizzically, fingering his chin.

Neku wanted to kick something. "_Go. Away._"

There was a flash of something in Joshua's ambiguous eyes, but it was gone before it could be identified as anything other than a nervous tic. "Hmph."

For a moment, the wind ceased, and the weight of silence hung heavy in the air.

After a while, Joshua shifted his weight from one foot to the other, looking uncomfortable. "So... Is something wrong?"

Neku did not grace him with an answer.

"...You can tell me," he said awkwardly, trying his best to sound friendly. (He sounded like a rusty gate, but that was to be expected.)

Josh felt his ears turning pink and inwardly cursed his wretched skills at teleporting. Many a time during Week 2 had he warped into the air, the picture of grace, and rudely bonked his head on a passing Easterraven. Maybe, if he had landed on the floor below just now, like he had intended to, he would never have learnt of Neku's agony of the soul. And ignorance is bliss, is it not? His psyche grumbled to itself.

The young Composer (whoops, spoiler) was only extending his tender heart-hands to Neku's because of Mr. H, actually. The barista had tracked Joshua down and basically promised him many hideous, pain-filled shenanigans would come to the boy on swift wings if he didn't promptly organize his shit and make some friends.

What prompted such a violent reaction out of the otherwise-chill Angel? Apparently, seeing Neku parade around with his friends day in and day out, juxtaposed against Joshua's unflappable laziness, had worn away on his nerves until the breaking point. "Why can't you be more like _him?_ _He_'s happy! _He_'s successful! _He_ doesn't smell like something crawled in a sewage main and died there!" Mr. H would probably snap and dump coffee in his cornflakes if Joshua decided to be belligerent about this, and dealing with an angry Angel was like being constantly henpecked by a lovecraftian monstrosity from beyond the void, only worse - and so, it was all-around far easier to just do what Coffee Man said.

Albeit begrudgingly.

Neku narrowed his eyes, suspicious. "...Why do _you_ care?"

"Well..." Josh thought this over for a second. He couldn't exactly outright say he was letting himself get bossed around by Mr. H, lest his image be weakened.

Neku glared at him with a tabulating look in his eyes. They told all: I'm waiting.

"I saw them mocking you. Frankly, it wasn't very civil." Joshua smirked. "Besides, laughing at you is_ my_ job."

"Typical asshole," Neku sighed, as if disappointed. "Seriously, bug off. It's none of your business."

"Brr," said Joshua, which was rather odd, considering that it was nice and warm outside.

There passed another period of muggy silence, broken only by the sounds of the city below.

Eventually, Joshua gathered his forces and tried again. "That's kind of harsh of you, you know. But! I will respect your wishes, and change topics."

"My wish is for you to _go away_," Neku reminded him.

"I said respect them, not grant them." _I'm not a fairy, you know_, he thought with a touch of exasperation. A pause. "So... what's in the box?"

Neku was giving him the silent treatment, which was unacceptable. And irritating.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but..." Joshua leaned over obnoxiously, until his nose was inches away from Neku's deadly hair spines. Neku, understandably, recoiled. "...My sensors are detecting sidewalk chalk."

The Proxy stared at Joshua for a few seconds, incredulous. "You're just gonna keep bothering me until I tell you, aren't you? Upping the ante on annoying with every passing round, right?"

"Mmmyep."

"Wow." Neku rolled his eyes. "You have the mentality of a third grader." He sighed. "Well, if you're just going to bug me 'till I tell you anyway..."

He showed Joshua the slightly-crumpled box of chalk, confirming the current hypothesis.

"It's for hopscotch," he explained.

"Hm. That's nice," said Joshua flatly. And then, after a moment of furious brain-racking and coming up short, he said: "What, pray tell, is this so-called 'hopscotch?'" Privately, he was hoping it was related to butterscotch. Mmmmmm...

Neku looked up at Joshua, bewildered. "Wha- are you seriously telling me you don't know what hopscotch is?"

"N-No," snapped Josh, a little too quickly.

"Really, now?" Neku raised an eyebrow.

"It's just that," Joshua began. "when you've existed as long as I have, the mind gets crammed full of information – so much, in fact, that things sometimes get misfiled or lost in the heaps and heaps of knowledge, and to find certain things is a trivial pursuit. In regards to this... 'hoscpotch,' I assume it's one of your trite mortal pastimes, and thus nothing of importance... But I'm sure I'd remember it and all its entailings if you just refreshed me on the basic concepts."

Snort. "You don't have any idea, do you?"

At first, he was a little pissed at this condescending garbage Neku was putting out, but then a plan flickered in the back of the boy Composer's mind. Joshua flicked his hair haughtily, the way he did when he was greatly annoyed, cranking the bitch dial to over eleven. "And just where did you get _that_ preposterous hypothesis, hm?"

Neku grinned slightly. "It's hopscotch, not_ hoscpotch_, Beat."

"Gyah-HUH!" Josh recoiled as if stung, hiccasping, reeling in horror at the revelation. He really played it up to the maximum, falling to his knees, gripping his head, moaning and wailing. "R-really? Really? What? How? How could this happen?" With shaking hands, Joshua clutched at his unbeating heart. "No... no! Impossible! I refuse to live as this, a failure, a disgrace! I have dishonored! DISHONORED! I can't live with the _shame!_ The _agony!_ OH, THE HUMANITY! It's too much - _it's all too much!_ _I'm going to kill myself over THIS!_"

Neku laughed a little. "Heh... You... don't have to do that, you know."

Joshua froze mid-theatrics. "Eh?"

"But... thanks." The Proxy looked slightly cheered, anyway.

_JUST AS PLANNED_, thought Josh, even as he teetered back and forth. He managed to collect himself before he fell over completely, and reclaimed his balance, even if it was a tad shaky. "Ugh... fine. You got me. I'm completely clueless. If you'd care to enlighten me, please do." He took a moment to gruffly smooth out his shirt and rub his silky-suave demeanor back into his skin like a lotion.

Neku rattled the box a little. "Basically, you draw a bunch of squares and hop around in 'em."

"Sounds like a fun time," Joshua said with a hint of sarcasm.

The orange-haired boy wonder glowered. "It's a little more complex than that, you know. There's more to it."

"I should hope so. I like my hopping with a bit of _depth_."

Neku sighed and opened the box. In a flash Josh was upon him – no, not like _that_, fangirls – and had ripped the box from his hands.

Joshua clucked his tongue. "Well, what do you know. Chalk." He sounded disappointed for some reason.

"I already _told_ you it was chalk. Give it back," Neku growled. Joshua took his time, but eventually handed the box back to the rightful owner. Neku snatched it back and took out a utensil of choice – it was kind of strange how he looked over each stick before choosing one, since the chalk was just plain white. "All right, so here's what you do..."

Brandishing his chalk stick, Neku attacked the concrete, swiping this way and that with a look of ferocity written on his face in bright vivid colors. It reminded Joshua vaguely of a certain third party and his Taboo Noise refinery sigils.

"...There," Neku muttered, sitting up on his knees and surveying his little chalk design, wiping his forehead. It was starting to get a little warmer out, much to Joshua's displeasure. Neku didn't really care though – he was greatly anticipating kicking the hundred pounds or so of jackass that was Josh at a totally intense hopscotch battle. Why he was so fired up, I will never understand, because everyone knows hopscotch is about the most terrible game ever invented. "Okay, so you take a rock or something to be a marker, and you stand on this square here..." Neku got up, to demonstrate. "And then you toss the marker, like so... and then... wherever it lands, you have to hop there and pick it up."

"Hmph. Predictable." (He had no idea, really, and Neku could tell. They had been partners, after all.)

"BUT. Here's the catch – you can only hop on one leg. Unless, there's two squares, which means you can use both feet. BUT. There has to be one in each square. Also, if it falls outside the squares... you have to hop over and pick it up without leaving the hopscotch thing! And, after you pick it up... you have to do it again until you hop to the end of the chalk thingy, and then you have to turn around and do the same thing back." Neku explained all this cockamamie garbage while tossing a Black Venus pin around, hopping around on one foot and making a fool of himself.

"You're making a fool of yourself," Joshua informed Neku.

Neku glared at him before deftly hip-hopping the last few spaces back to the beginning, chalk box bouncing at his side. "Your turn."

"What?"

"Your turn!" Neku snapped, pressing the pin into Joshua's palm with conviction.

For a brief span of time, Joshua stared at Neku as if he were from the moon. Then, "No."

"Huh? But, Josh..."

"No, no way. This is stupid." Joshua regarded the chicken-scratch chalk design with disdain.

Neku looked at Joshua forlornly for a second, and gave him a little shove. "That's never stopped you before."

"Well, I -"

Neku's gaze hardened, and he shoved Josh again - and it was a little less friendly, this time. "Come on, you prissy little wimp. You can strut around in Dragon Couture heels and a denim miniskirt, but you can't play hopscotch?"

"To be honest, Neku, that requires a completely different skill set-"

"Excuses, excuses." Neku scowled and resorted to the most juvenile of blows: petty name calling. "I bet you're too scared, ya big sheep-head!"

A nerve was struck. "Sh-sh-SHEEP-HEAD?"

Neku's eyes glinted like steel, lighting up with schaudenfreude, and he gave a final shove that sent Joshua staggering. "Heh, yeah! You wooly-bully lambsan! Afraid you'll scuff your shoes? Huh? You big cream puff! Sheep-head! Sheeeep-head!"

Suddenly, somewhere, deep within the cloudy crevices of Joshua's fluffy head, in the darkest, most cobwebby corner of his brain, something snapped.

"_I... am... not... a... SHEEP!_"

Eyes glittering with fury, Joshua stepped onto the first square, conveniently labeled "1." He chucked Black Venus with a soulful grunt ("Ha-ah!") and watched it fall, landing over somewhere by the air conditioning unit.

...Which was a good three feet abreast of the last chalk square, number 12. Joshua blanched.

"Har har har!" Neku cackled. "You have to hop over and pick it up without leaving the hopscotch thing!"

Joshua shot him a look. "Thank you, Neku." _...you prat._

He returned his attention to the stupid pin. Well, he was Composer, after all. He could just lean over and pick it up, right? Shouldn't be too difficult, seeing as how this was just a silly little children's game, intended for silly little children. A silly, trite pasttime of the death-doomed, that was all. Joshua was about to take a step forward when a sharp jab in the ribs, courtesy of the Proxy, reminded him of the "rules." Hmph, well, so be it. Hopping it was, then.

Hop. Hop. This is stupid. Hop. Two feet. Hop. Wobble... ("Gyah-HUH...!") wobble... stagger... regain balance... gather forces... hop. Hop. Hop. Two feet. Hop – oh holy bajeebus, that was one foot only, wasn't it-! Wobble wobble wobble, thrash arms like a windmill, do not fall Josh, do not fall... hop. There!You're done, Josh. Now, was that so hard?

Most definitely. Of course, the fact that his feet were unusually small made things no easier for him. Joshua narrowed his eyes, panting slightly, and reevaluated Black Venus, which was watching him – mocking him – from halfway under the a/c unit, a good meter away. Now for Reduction 02. Get ready...!

Joshua bent over and leaned forward, wobbling. Neku had prowled around to this end of the hopscotch thing and was now watching Josh like a hawk, presumably to prevent the Composer from just levitating the pin into his hand. Oh, Neku. You bother. Joshua thrust out a hand, but he was still too far...

A few more inches at the knee would do the trick...

There... and now...

Just a little bit forward...

Almost there...

_Almost..._

At that moment, several things happened.

Elsewhere, in Sunshine Burger, Shiki Misaki turned to Eri Whats-her-face and mumbled in a guilt-ridden voice, "Poor Neku, I guess we really hurt hith feelings, huh?"

"I know... Hey! We should all make him apology cards!" Eri said brightly, dipping a fry in her milkshake.

Shiki perked up immediately. "Yeah! With glitter! And thtickerth!" After some thought, she added, "...LOTTH of thtickerth!"

Back on top of Pork City, Neku let rip a massive sneeze that could have made Beat jealous.

Poor Joshua was not prepared, and the resulting shockwave shattered his delicate balance. He pitched forward, made kind of a funny jump/spasm with his foot, yelped, reached out and grabbed Neku's shorts in the hope of saving his face from a bad romance with the concrete, and –

The next instant, they were gone.

* * *

**A/N:** ...What? You expected fluff and tears, and you got hopscotch?

...Well that line doesn't really work anymore since I changed it.

So: in the beginning, this chapter was meant as bait. Neku was acting like a moonish waif in order to lure people in with the promise of fluffy yaoi garbage!

but it kind of is a huge fucking disgrace to everything Neku is and ever will be so

we can do without

also it alienates people who don't like that kind of thing, sorry

THIS THING

IS TOTALLY NOT _THAT_ KIND OF THING, I SWEAR

seriously


	2. In which Selves are Found

_**JOSHUA**__**TRIPS**_

CHAPTER TWO: IN WHICH NEKU AND JOSHUA FIND THEMSELVES

Summary: While playing hopscotch with Neku on the top of Pork City, Joshua orchestrates immaculate lack of coordination, and the world suffers for it. And by the world, we mean Neku. Plot involves much slashery, but you should read it regardless, because it's not exactly what you're thinking of.

**Did I seriously write slashery *punches 13-year-old self in the face***

Rating: T for yucky stuff and Neku's potty-mouthiness.

OF NOTE IN THIS CHAPTER: Neku gets pantsed. Joshua gets complimented on his hair. Sho and Megumi do stuff nobody cares about.

Genre: PARODY/adventure

obviously the dominant gene is COMPLETE BULLSHIT

* * *

It was a beautiful sunny day and Neku was pissed.

Somehow, he (Neku Sakuraba) and Yoshiya Kiryu (otherwise known as "that freaking Joshua") wound up in a curious position. The last thing Neku remembered had been Josh falling forward and grabbing at his shorts for dear life. Next thing he knew, he had been sucked downward by a tremendous force, almost as though he were body-slammed from behind, which was followed by a curious sensation that Neku figured was like being sucked through a straw.

Anyway, the general effect was that Neku wound up sprawled on top of the other boy with his shorts around his ankles.

"DUDE." Neku said loudly. "...THE HELL?"

Joshua emitted a muffled noise from somewhere beneath Neku's nether regions. "Dammit, Joshua! Get outta there!" Neku snapped, certainly not in the mood for this kind of crap.

Joshua's hand began frantically tapping out. "Mrrrmm _hrrrm__hrrm__!_" If anyone around had been able to speak Muffled, it would have been clear that Joshua was shouting "GET OFF ME;" however, there was no one with such capabilities around, so it wound up sounding like Josh was eating something tasty.

Repulsed, Neku rolled off the quivering carcass that was Joshua. "Dude! ...DUDE."

Josh gasped for air. "...Good grief, you're so freaking BIG, you almost smothered me, you tremendous lump..."

Neku took that the wrong way and bequeathed to Joshua a boot to the head. Then, he returned to more important matters, such as the affair with his pants. After all his clothes were back on and the breeze was a lot less prevalent, Neku suddenly noticed something.

_Hey__, __the __hopscotch __thingy __is __gone__..._Feeling a sudden sense of foreboding, he glanced over past the writhing Joshua and at the air conditioning unit, but Black Venus was nowhere to be found. _What __the__...? __Hey__!_

"Yoshiya, you fat, pig-disgusting cream puff, what did you do with Black Venus? That was a Darklit Planet! A CAT original!" The Proxy looked close to tearing his hair out - well, Black Venus was a powerful pin, yes, and he had reason to be pissed about their, uh, crash landing, but his sudden outburst of emotion seemed a little out-of-character.

"Ouch... Ugh, well, maybe it wasn't such a good idea to toss it around all willy-nilly like a simple coin, then?" Joshua spat, nursing his busted lip, every so often casting a reproachful glance at Neku's big-ass shoes. "...And, by the way, _Neku_, I'm not fat! You need to understand that the presence of body fat alone does not equal obesity-"

"What did you do?" Neku yelled, practically trampling Joshua in his haste to rip the a/c unit asunder and search for his beloved pin. "_What __did __you __do__?_"

"Nothing! I'm innocent, I swear! Innocence incarnate!" Joshua insisted, rubbing his lip frantically. Why hadn't it healed yet?

"Like HELL you are!" Neku snarled, totally flying off the handle. He felt angry, he felt dizzy, he felt weird - and the latter had nothing to do with the compromising landing at all. It was something in the air... like flies were buzzing in his head, humming and vibrating all through each part of him until his teeth rattled and his eyes ached - making him madder and madder for no real reason. His lungs felt as though filled with a blistering dust storm, a whirling tornado of red-hot sand that burned the tender tube tissues like sparks of fire. It was as almost though he had just sucked in a pound of chili powder. "You're always - the meddler - and, like - _breaking_ shit! All the time! Breaking! Sneaking! AGH!"

He fell to a fit of coughing and sputtering. _I__-__I__'__m __burning__! - __what __the __hell__...?_ It spread over his body, like a rash rippling through his entirety, boiling his skin away in spots of bloody red pain, frying his flesh and crumbling his bones into ash. It was crazy.

Joshua arched an eyebrow, seeing Neku thrashing around like a mental patient. "Are you all right?"

"(HORK HARK GACK)"

Now, Joshua felt the same burning, but at least he had the sense to recognize it. _Ah__, __dimension __lag__._ He took a few deep breaths of the strange, prickly air and focused on waggling only his big toe. In no time, the feeling faded away into a dull and subtle buzzing that was easy to ignore.

Now, for the cargo. "Neku, Neku, Neku. Rashly jumping to conclusions, as usual." He rubbed his lip. "I believe I happen to know what happened to your pin."

"OF COURSE YOU DO! YOU BELIEVE YOU HAPPEN TO KNOW _EVERYTHING_, YOU SMUG LITTLE PIECE OF SNOT!" yelled Neku, who had gone berserk all over the a/c unit and was now scratching violently at his arms. "IT ITCHES-!" _Clearly__, _dimensional _hopscotch __is __unknown __territory_, Joshua thought with a bit of a smirk.

However. Josh was not about to drag a raving Neku all around this Shibuya. He had already detected a major problem – his Composer powers weren't working, and this was not a good sign. Not a good sign at all. He didn't need to babysit a lunatic besides.

"Neku-kun," he called in as soothing a voice he could muster – his reedy voice was prone to cracking and chafing against the ear, so this was a bit of a feat – and reached out to Neku. He only managed to grab the poor child's leg, but he affixed it in an iron grip worthy of praise and basically shackled Neku's berserker rage to the floor. He attempted to calm the raging beast. "Calm down, you big silly. Your pin is perfectly safe."

Neku rotated his head 180 degrees and blasted Joshua with the most frigid death glare money can buy. _How __strange_, Joshua mused as he felt his nose hairs begin to stiffen, _Neku__'__s __moods __seem __to __directly __affect __the __weather_. "It had _better_ be," Neku whispered in a voice that was deathly quiet.

Joshua struggled to keep the smirk pinned on his face – it wasn't that hard, actually, seeing as how Neku had helpfully flash-frozen Josh's face-meat – and continued. "Relax, please. Take deep breaths. Slowly. Count each breath in seconds - try to get the exhalation to be twice as long as the inhalation."

Neku resisted at first but eventually caved. In minutes he was breathing like an expert yogi, and the frantic clawing at his own flesh had petered down to the occasional scratching.

Joshua nodded. "Yes, yes. Very good! The subject is doing well! Focus on moving something small. Like your toe, or your p-"

"_Excuse__you__?_"

"-inky...?" Joshua blinked, then scowled. "_Really_, Neku. How old do you think I am, anyway? Three?"

Neku flipped Joshua off.

"That'll do," Joshua said coolly, letting go of Neku's leg and arranging himself into a more comfortable position.

After a moment of this, the bizarre, burning hum faded away from their consciousness. Neku still looked sort of like a hunchbacked gargoyle, but then again that was normal for him. When it seemed that the two had finally achieved some kind of equlibrium with the burning air of this world, Joshua decided it was high time to pump out some exposition.

"Now, Nekkun, there's no need to throw a tantrum. Rest assired, your pin is safe and sound, right where we left it."

"But what your prophetic bullshit fails to take into account is the small detail that... it _isn__'__t_," Neku grumbled, pointing to the decidedly pin-free crater where the a/c unit used to be.

"Ah, yes. I was getting to that part." Joshua inspected his hand thoughtfully. "I believe we have merely teleported into a parallel world."

He might as well as stuffed a pipe bomb down Neku's shorts, for all the brownie points that got him. "What in the name of sweet, delicious fuck are you talking about _now__?_"

Joshua sighed. "Well, like we...crossed over into an alternate universe."

"An alternate universe," Neku repeated.

"Yes, Neku, very good."

Neku punched Joshua for that, generously adding another colorful blotch to the Composer's pasty face.

"I am not taking ANY of your crap today," Neku announced, cracking his knuckles. "Just TELL ME WHAT IS GOING ON, and maybe I won't brutalize you."

"_Ow_, Neku." Joshua touched his cheek gingerly, wincing. "You have to be careful with me, Nekkun, I'm a delicate flower."

"Then it might be wise to get with the program, eh, Joshy?"

Joshua groaned and added a point to Neku's score. "Ugh. Well, you expelled your revolting nasal fluids all over me, and I panicked, like any reasonable person would. In my brief moment of terror, I must have triggered the universe jump - and when I grabbed you, well... you probably got pulled along in the backlash. That would be my guess." Joshua's face was starting to throb dully. He moaned. "Why did you

Neku snorted. "So just teleport-jump-sneeze us back," he snapped, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"I can't exactly do that," Joshua mumbled, lowering a hand from his face and staring at it crossly.

"And why not, Joshua?"

"Because," the smaller boy snapped. "It appears I've lost my Composer status for some reason."

Neku goggled at Josh for a moment. "...Seriously? You're kidding, right?"

Joshua assured him that no, he wasn't.

"But you're like, this age-old, arcane force of divine will, aren't you? That doesn't seem like something you can just... lose, all of a sudden." He rubbed his temples, frowning. "How do you even..."

"Easy, tiger. Don't you go getting a conniption on me now," Joshua said, smiling a little fakily. The truth was, he was the same age as Neku exactly - but nobody needed to know that, now. He was already affable enough, thank you. "It's a regular occurrence, actually. The thing is, you're only Composer on your home turf. If I jump into a world that already has a Composer established, my powers are turned off. It has to do with a person having a stronger vibe in their home world, although now we're touching on some ghastly subjects that aren't exactly light reading." Josh stretched and got to his feet, brushing imaginary dirt off his pants leg. "Anyway, planar-jumping is typically a one-way street."

"Then how am I gonna get home?" Neku asked, looking extremely worried. He smelled a fanfic plot coming on...

"Hmm. Well, I usually just call Mr. H, and he comes and picks me up." Josh shrugged, sliding a hand in his pocket.

"So do it," Neku commanded, pointing at the hand-in-the-pocket.

"Yes sir," Joshua sighed, and pulled out his phone. He had Hanekoma on speed dial, so it was a simple matter of pressing 3 and then waiting for the Producer to pick up.

Only, he didn't. Joshua frowned.

"What?" Neku asked urgently. When answers weren't immediately forthcoming, he tried again: "What's wrong?"

"Shh, don't pester me." Was it just bad reception, or was he out of range? He hadn't jumped too far, had he? That would be just a pain in a plethora of sensitive areas.

A minute of this passed.

Joshua clucked his tongue softly - "Tch." He glanced at his tag-along. "Uhm, Neku, he's not picking up."

Neku gave Joshua a knowing look. "Ah. Lover's quarrel?"

"Very funny." Joshua bit his lip, regretted it, fiddled with his phone for a sec, and put it back on his ear. No difference. "He's... I don't think he's the problem, Neku. I doubt I'm getting through."

"Oh, I see." Neku nodded sagely. "Your phone can take pictures of the past, drop cars from the heavens, call down beams of angelic holy light, and teleport small demons across short distances, but you can't place a call." He stomped his foot and threw up his hands. "Doesn't that, oh, I don't know, DEFEAT THE PURPOSE?"

"Hush, boy," Josh said, holding a finger to his lips. "I think I'm getting something." And although it was blocky and distorted, Josh was, indeed, hearing some sort of ringtone underneath all that interference.

And then, like a shout from across a great distance, there came this blessed word on the other end of the line: "Hullo?"

"Mr. H!" Joshua squealed, overjoyed. "Boy, am I glad you finally decided to pick up, hee hee! We're in a bit of a fix. Neku sneezed all over me and I accidentally teleported us into an alternate reality, so if you could please come and pick us up, that would be just -"

"Hullo?" A wave of static flooded over the faint voice on the other line – _sssghh sgssgs gzzzttt_... "Hullo? Who is this?"

"It's me, Joshua! Hey, Mr. H! It's Josh! ...Mr. H? Sanae?" Joshua practically shouted into the phone, trying to crush the crackling with his voice. "Sanae!"

"Stupid" - here the audio was obscured by more static - "ing prank calls..." And Sanae Hanekoma hung up.

"No!" Josh yelled, chucking his phone at the nearest person in frustration. It hit Neku squarely in the face, lingered there for a moment, and fell off, but was caught by Neku's ridiculous collar-thing. Neku reached into his shirt, excavated it from the pit of despair, and held it out to Joshua, who reached out to take it.

Neku quickly jerked his arm and dangled the phone out of reach. "First, explain."

Josh looked at the phone miserably. The speaker was still crackling with meaningless noise. "He hung up."

"Why—well, I would too, but...Did you mention Neku was with you?" Neku stared at the god-modded phone in panic. Mr. Hanekoma left him out to dry? That didn't seem right...

Joshua sighed. "I really don't think he could hear me, Neku. There was too much interference."

"Interference from what, now?" Neku said.

Joshua plucked the cell from Neku's fingers and stuffed it back in his pocket. "That's a mystery I'd like to solve. It looks like we're going to have to do a little old-fashioned information gathering before we get anywhere. Just like the good ol' days, right, partner?" He finished that sentence with a smug giggle.

Neku grimaced. Aw, crap. Not this again. "So...what do you have in mind? I can't really scan..."

"I know. Bothersome, isn't it?" Joshua smiled at Neku, who gave him a cross glare in response that said _I __do __not __like __you__, __but __I__'__m __stuck __with __you__, __and __survival __instinct __has __kicked __in__, __so __I __will __put __up __with __you __as __necessity __requires__, __but __I __DO __NOT __LIKE __YOU_. Funny how a single look can say volumes. Joshua was really wishing Neku would stop antagonizing him. "So...I'm thinking that this interference could be coming from one of two places, or a combination of both."

"What."

"...For example, Ovid, this interference could be coming from somewhere down on the streets – say, a bunch of people are calling each other at around the same time, or maybe there's a certain television frequency in this world that's messing with the signal – oooorrr... perhaps Pork City itself is to blame; all the recycled Noise, making a fuss."

"That's nice. So what do we do?" Neku fingered one of his hair spines, twisting it into a deadly point.

"Well, Neku, we simply head for the elevator." Joshua said this as if he were explaining something to a small child, which really ticked Neku off. "We'll go to, say, Ramen Don, and try again. That way, if the static isn't cleared up, we'll know we're dealing with a bigger problem, one that's linked directly to the environment, as opposed to Pork City. We'll go from there."

"Sounds good," Neku grumbled. _Man__, __puttering __around __Shibuya __with __you _again, _it __was __hell __the __first __time__... __but__, __then __again__, __what __choice __do __I __have__?_ He thought this in an irritated sort of way, cursing his luck. _...__At __least __something __constructive __might __come __out __of __it __now__. __Still__... __W__hat __a __pain__._

Joshua put his smile back on and gestured to the stairwell. "Well then, shall we?"

It was a while before Josh noticed something was wrong.

He should have noticed as soon as they stepped out of Pork City, but well, there you go. It took about a minute of walking along the street with Neku plodding behind, swinging his chalk box, before it finally started to bother his conscious – there was something off about this Dogenzaka Hill...

There were some unusual changes in the groundwork of the world itself, to begin with. The air was like golden water, if that made any sense, thick with a floral perfume that made Joshua's eyes water. _Oh__, __good__, __I__'__m __allergic __to __the __oxygen_, he thought with a sniffle. Or, maybe it had something to do with the strange flowery vines choking the buildings, the sidewalk, as if someone had launched rosebushes everywhere and they were now treating the splatter as tasteful décor. Joshua stepped over a stray thorny vine, looking at it disdainfully even through his streaming eyes. Roses don't even grow on vines, but there they were, enmeshing the buildings like so many garden trellises.

But for the life of him, Joshua couldn't quite place what was the real problem. Sure, rose-vines were weird, but he'd seen stranger, like that one world where dinosaurs had never gone extinct and he'd been throttled by a Deinonekus. He glanced at Neku, wondering if his partner had noticed anything odd, but the former Proxy's face was buried so deep in his collar that only the tips of his sunset-colored crown of hair were showing. Well, whatever. Joshua decided it wasn't anything,he was just being paranoid, and put it out of his mind for now. Whatever was strange about the pedestrians would have to wait.

"Hey," Neku said after a minute of walking. "If this is an alternate world...does this mean there will be an alternate...us?"

"Most likely, unless this is one of those It's a Wonderful Life setups where we were never born," Joshua replied, thoughtful.

Neku frowned, staring hard at the street ahead of the pair. "Okay, but... What happens if we bump into them?"

Joshua looked at poor Neku and giggled. "Oh, Shibuya's huge, Neku. I'm sure we won't – ACK!"

He staggered backwards, and fell down on his rear with a bump. Neku would have been able to catch him if he hadn't suddenly had to tie his shoelace – funny, because the rain boots he always clomped around in had button fastens.

"Hee, hee! Oh, my giggly gosh... I'm _so_ sorry!" sputtered the offending person. They tucked their phone away – really, teenagers these days, don't know when to get off the horn – and reached out a hand to help the fallen Composer up.

"That's all right, just be more careful next ti-" Joshua took the offered hand, looked up, and froze.

A somewhat small, svelte youngster with a messy, french-gray mop of hair grinned back at him, dull violet eyes sparkling. A faint blush spread across his pretty face. "I will, I promise! ...Oh, my gosh, dear, I just love your hair! Tee hee hee..."

Somewhere off in the background, Neku snickered. Joshua flushed.

The other Joshua helped him to his feet, smiling like something out of Stepford. It was weird. "Um, so...is this your Neku?" he asked, pointing to Joshua's tag-along.

"I guess so," our Joshua said, carefully. He shot a measured glance at his companion, who quickly pulled his finger out of his nose. Knitting his eyebrows, Joshua felt the feeling of unease that had been stirring in his gut for some time now gain a few pounds. Something was wrong here... but what?

"_Gyah__-__huh__!_ Oh, you lucky duck! I'm sooo jealous." The other Joshua said, playfully smacking Joshua on the arm. "I wish I had a Neku, too... but you know, they go so fast, right?"

"Oh, yeah, they practically walk off the shelves," Joshua grumbled, smoothing out his sleeve with disdain.

"So, what's his type? Is he offense? Or defense?" The other Josh winked roguishly, which was rather revolting. "He's pretty cute, heehee... tugging on his clothes so shyly like that..."

"I can't say that I know," Joshua said, thinking soccer. Did Neku even play soccer? Was this a soccer world or something? He frowned at the cute comment, but chalked it up to common condescension. "Neku?"

"I'm offensive," said Neku matter-of-factly. He was picking on a thread that had wriggled itself out from the hem of his shirt. It reminded him vaguely of Shiki - if she were here, she'd promptly rip his shirt off and embarrass him horribly in front of Statler and Waldorf over there. Gods, he missed her already. "Actually, defensive. It depends."

"Oh. Reversible. I see." The other Joshua nodded knowingly before rounding on Josh again. "You must be so happy! Reversibles are compatible with all types! I... I think I'm on the sub-dominant chord, myself, but I've heard that the more aggressive Nekus are just plain ruthless. I've always wanted a Reversible of my own..." He sighed wistfully and rubbed his stomach area. "Ooh, I can't _stand_ it. He's too yummy. This is just torture..."

Joshua looked on, aghast. Wh-What? "Um, well, he's not that great."

"Really? Well... you know..." A hopeful cast came over the other Joshua's features. "If you're not happy with him, maybe I could take him off your hands?" He smiled cutely and batted his eyelashes.

"Er, no, that's quite all right... Neku. Neku! AHEM." Joshua rapped the boy on his orange head. This was getting a little too weird. "We have to go, Neku. _Right__?_"

"Uh, yeah," Neku said, busy examining the stray thread. It seemed to have doubled in length, thanks to his messing with it. Excellent. Shiki would rip his clothes off if she saw_this_ monster waggling proudly in the wind. He grinned victoriously to himself.

The other Joshua started giggling. "Aww, you guys..."

"What?" Joshua and Neku snapped at the same time, both feeling rather short with this alternate being already.

"You guys are so...hee hee!" The other Joshua paused to tuck his bangs behind his ear and look at the two knowingly. "Well, I don't want to keep you, so...I'd best be going. I have to meet my San-san at the cafe! Teeheeheehee~! Catch you laters, alligators!" He then started off down the street, humming a tune and exuding a cloying aura of sweetness that seemed to turn the air around him into pink sugar.

Joshua thought he might be sick. "That has got to be the worst one yet," he grumbled, messing with his hair.

"I'll say," Neku remarked. "San-san?"

He then proceeded to dissolve into a fit of barely-stifled laughter. Joshua heaved a ragged sigh. "Can we get going?"

Neku took a deep breath, lips twitching from suppressed snickers. "Sure, sure. We have to call San-san, right?" The thought of this was too much for him and a stream of giggles leaked out of the corner of his mouth. "Pfftheehee..."

Joshua rolled his gaze skyward, cursing whatever holy power had decided that he needed to be the butt monkey today, and proceeded to drag Neku off in the direction of the Ramen Don.

"Irasshai!"

"Kawaii desu," Joshua snapped. He was not in the mood.

Ramen Guy looked at him in disgust and turned away to tend to the ramen contraptions back in the... kitchen. It was about then that Joshua noticed that the Don was a bit different. Scratch that, it was hardly recognizable. The inside was larger than the Shadow Ramen place, and although nobody was dancing on the tables at the moment, it seemed pretty lively. There were customers everywhere, and Josh felt a sinking feeling – no, this _wasn__'__t_ going to be nice and quiet. He muttered something nasty under his breath and scuffed the toe of his nice shoe on the ground.

"He fixed the place up a bit, didn't he?" Neku mused, arms thrown confidently behind his head, chalk box rattling behind his ear.

"So it would appear," Joshua grumbled, fingering his chin. They actually had to wait for a table, sheesh... he _despised_ waiting.

Eventually they were shunted off to a table in the far back reaches of the restaurant. It was actually one of those booth things with the cushy seats. Joshua allowed himself a moment of curious bouncing before he settled down against the wall, hands folded daintily in his lap.

"So..." Neku mumbled, sliding into the seat across from Josh. "The phone, right?"

"Yes." Joshua pulled it out with a flourish and set it on the table. They stared at it for a few minutes, Neku laying his head on the table and Josh propping himself up with his elbows.

"Y'know, Josh**... **maybe it's a malfunction with the phone itself," Neku offered after some time. He drummed the tabletop with his fingers, humming distractedly.

"Oh, I suppose it's possible, butI'm sure it was working fine last night."

"Did you remember to charge it? Or can the Composer charge electronics simply by being in the room?"

Joshua gave him a withering look. "Of course I _charged_ it, Neku," he spat. "This phone is the most precious thing in the world to me. I never forget to charge it."

"I dunno. You just seem kinda fluff-headed sometimes, when it comes to some stuff." Neku shrugged.

The overly pale boy narrowed his eyes. "Like what?"

Neku shrugged again.

Joshua frowned and stared harder at his cell phone, as if maybe by looking at it hard enough he could crack it open and the problems would escape into the air like steam trapped in a hot pastry.

After a moment, Neku spoke again. Quietly, evenly. "Hey, I just wanted to say... I want to go home. I want to go home, I want to go see Shiki and the rest again... I don't want to be stuck here, okay? I don't want to be your 'adventure buddy.' Don't think for a minute I've forgiven you. I still don't really like you, Joshua; you're all right, but you're a jerk. But I will put up with you, at least until we get home. And let me be blunt: if it turns out we can't ever go home for some reason, you'll have screwed up beyond any remaining hope, and I don't think you will ever redeem yourself in my eyes. Just so you know."

But no pressure.

"I know." Joshua knotted his hands in his hair, never taking his gaze off the little hunk of orange plastic. "...I know."

Neku pulled out a stick of chalk and started doodling on the table.

There was more quiet. The two were kind of at odds at each other, you see. It had been a bit of a while since they had last seen each other, and all of a sudden... this. Well, they didn't have much to talk about, not really knowing or caring much about the other's life.

Neku wouldn't need to contemplate this issue for very long if you asked him about it. It was just kind of hard to want to talk to someone who you clearly remembered bursting out of nowhere and popping a cap up your aorta.

Joshua had stolen his life, but he _had_given it back, and thanks to a thing Joshua called a "return to the past" the actual killing never really happened. Even so, that didn't make it socially acceptable to go around shooting people while they were trying to appreciate arts. It was kind of, well, _rude_.

More importantly... the memories just didn't fade.

Neku clearly remembered Joshua seemed to _enjoy_ the act of killing – his face, twisted in a sickeningly triumphant grin and practically glowing with giddy excitement as Neku hit the pavement for the final time, was just a tad too happy for the occasion. In addition, it was a little disturbing that Joshua could come busting out of nowhere, all "Heeeeere's JOSHY!," kill them, and then show up and have a normal conversation with them a week later. Neku consoled himself by saying that the Angels probably wouldn't let a total homicidal maniac be in charge of a town, but still. It freaked Neku out. It would freak _anyone_ out.

When he addressed the problem with logical reasoning on his side, Neku assumed that the concept of death was somewhat cheapened to a warden of the afterlife. As Joshua had the power to bring people back to life, death was probably no big deal to him; therefore, his willingness to let people die was sort of justified. But, you know, that doesn't mean you have to leer like a sicko while you shoot people. Besides, while death might be cheap to Joshua, Neku certainly wasn't planning to die again any time soon - particularly not at Joshua's whimsy.

Anyway. Even though the killing thing had been somewhat resolved, it was everything else that had happened during the Reaper's Game that really bugged him. It had felt like he was in one of those psychological horror movies, with the gambits and machinations of powers beyond his control tugging him along like a simple puppet. And worse – that seemed to be an integral part of dealing with Joshua, like he couldn't help it or something. It was almost as if he were a _compulsive_ asshole.

So, you see, Neku didn't want to forgive Joshua just yet, although he wasn't really _mad _at him. He didn't want to install the idea in Joshua's head that Neku could be killed at the drop of a hat and it would do little other than mildly inconvenience him, so he was taking his sweet time backing out of the grudge garage. Neku didn't _want_ to hate Joshua, either; Josh was a pretty interesting fellow, despite his prickly nature, and of all of Neku's partners, it had been Joshua who Neku could relate to the most. If he dropped the mind games and the snottiness, maybe then they could get somewhere.

Neku hadn't noticed that Joshua was trying his best to be forward with him, but you know, it takes him a minute to catch on sometimes.

After a moment of spacing out, contemplating the current state of things, Neku realized he had subconsciously doodled a chalk picture of him and Joshua bumping knuckles. He stared at it blankly for a moment, and something ached inside his chest. His heart seemed to remember something his brain had forgotten, like the dusty memory of a once unbreakable bond...

Huh.

Neku glanced across the table at his partner and then back at the doodle. This would only raise teasing questions ("My, _my_, Nekkun. Is there something you wish to discuss with me?" or something along those lines), so Neku quickly changed the Joshua into Beat, his established bro. _Much_ better.

Joshua, meanwhile, was thinking about gigahertz and system processors, and not about Neku at all. How on earth do you increase the intensity of a phone call? Could it even be done? He furrowed his brow and stuck out his lip, thinking hard.

How was he going to get out of this one? He wasn't getting any bars down here, and if Pork City had chronic interference, then going up wouldn't help. Maybe they could go Grand Theft Auto on a helicopter or something – Josh had his gun in his pocket (just in case) – but who in Shibuya had a helicopter? Maybe if they tracked down this world's Hanekoma, they could ask him for help – but what if he wasn't available in the RG for whatever reason? Joshua grumbled, never in a good mood when he didn't have a plan. Stupid Neku and his stupid sneezes.

Speaking of Neku...

It was around this point that Joshua realized that he was drawing on the table, like a four year old with a crayon box. "Stop that," Joshua snapped. "That's called vandalism, Neku. It's illegal."

Neku snorted. "It'll come off," he said, shrugging.

Joshua did not like how Neku didn't seem to care about this whole thing. Sure, he said he wanted to go home, but... he was being awfully relaxed about the whole thing. _Too_ relaxed. Didn't it bother him at all? Didn't it bother him, just a little, that they were alone, that they had no one to take care of them, no one in the whole dimension...?

He swept his eyes over Neku's tiny chalk mural, toying with the idea that doodling was how Neku vented his angst. A particular drawing caught his eye; a chibi-style Neku and Beat, bumping fists.

Now, the ability to remove one's memories was a brilliant one. It was great to have on hand when surfing the Internets, for one thing. And, if a particular memory brought about unwanted pain, it was easy enough to remove altogether. Joshua didn't quite know what he had forgotten, but looking at that little picture made him suddenly aware of the empty feeling left in place of taken memories. Hm.

He stared at the picture a little longer than was necessary, pursing his lips in thought. Well, if he was missing memories, it was probably for a good reason. He wondered who had taken them, and felt a little twinge of uneasiness. With a frown tugging at his mouth, he wound his fingers in his hair and fiddled with it.

Joshua decided that he himself was getting a little too stressed, and he had left his B-12 supplement at home (bother), so he picked up his phone, opened up the High N Low game, and started clicking away. The therapeutic action of clearing inequalities washed his mind of stress. Greater than one, less than six, equal to four, equal to eight, more than two, less than nine, less than one (ouch), equal to seven, less than three, more than eight (double ouch)...

He was torn away from his clicking by a bop on the head. "Ow... yes, Neku?"

"Dude wants to take your order." Neku jabbed a finger at the waiter.

"Ain't got all day, hectopascals," sneered the waiter. Three guesses who he was, and the first two don't count. "Lemme guess... one shio plus one shoyu equals two happy hectograms, am I right?"

"Actually, we want the Big Catch," said Joshua, just to spite him.

Sho looked at him strangely for a minute, and then shook his head. "Whatever, dudes. I thought your little cult liked the shio, but... whatever." He scribbled something down on a pad and stomped off.

Josh frowned. Cult? What did he mean by – he realized that Neku was talking again. "Are all alterna-worlds as screwy as this one?"

"Screwy?" The lint-haired wonder arched an eyebrow.

"C'mon, dude, look at the bar," said Neku in exasperation. "Don't tell me you haven't noticed?"

The _bar__?_ Joshua wondered if Ken Doi was making his restaurant all American-y on purpose, or if the author of this fan fiction simply had no idea how Japanese food-places worked. There was a bar in the back, anyway, with someone serving drinks – _he __looks __like __Megumi_, Joshua smirked – but the problem wasn't him, it was the people at the bar...

"It's kind of weird how the redheads alternate with the blondes," Joshua remarked, feeling his stomach turn to ice.

"_Ahem__._ Kind of weird how nobody is _anything __but_ redhead or blonde, don'tcha think?"

Joshua looked at the other tables, slightly sick. "You're right..."

It was all coming together. The people outside... their clothes may have been different, but they all had the same hair... and the same faces... and the same...

"Joshua..." Neku sat up and glanced at him strangely. "Er, Josh... I'm no expert at this teleporting stuff, but... I would think there's only supposed to be _one_alternate us."

Joshua massaged his temples, staring at about thirty-four other people with the same curly gray hair and too-big button-down, all of which were sitting relatively close to the various fourteen people with spiky orange hair and stupid-looking J-of-the-M threads.

"Ten out of ten, Neku," he said miserably, slumping forward. "Ten out of ten."

* * *

**A/N:** REWROTED IT a little bit, hehe

less pissing and moaning from neku even though that's kind of his job

also

hi shibuyabeats

_i see you_


	3. In which Houses are Hunted for

_**JOSHUA TRIPS**_

CHAPTER THREE: IN WHICH NEKU AND JOSHUA GO HOUSE-HUNTING

Summary: After a mishap involving Joshua's poor balance and Neku's nasal lining, our heroes find themselves stranded in an alternate dimension with no easy way to get home. There's something off about the plane's natives, however...

Rating: T for yucky stuff and Neku's potty-mouthiness

OF NOTE IN THIS CHAPTER: Neku eats something tasty while Joshua argues with himself.

Genre: PARODY/adventure  
Although it might change later on.

* * *

Sho came back, toting twin bowls of fishy stuff. "Here ya go, one ordered pair of the Big Catch, ready to be crunched. Enjoy."

"Thanks, man," said Neku, somewhat hoarsely. Joshua was curled up, head buried in his arms, in serious thinking mode. Not to be bothered with. Sho shrugged and left.

After a moment, the ragged-looking boy sat up and started shoveling down his fishy stuff. Neku was a little surprised, as he usually only saw this kind of gusto from Beat. Or Rhyme. "Hungry?"

"Frrsh ish brnn frrd," Joshua said thickly through a mouthful of noodles. "Mmmm, ve-ry tasty..."

Neku eyed his bowl suspiciously. The Big Catch looked as gruesome as ever, what with that big, wet fish eye staring at him. Neku rolled his shoulders nervously but he ate it anyway. ...Not bad.

They ate in silence.

Joshua managed to finish his in a few noisy gulps, beating Neku by ages. (Neku, of course, was too cool for school and only took bites when he felt like it.) He proceeded to get up and wander off. Neku lifted an eyebrow and watched Joshua's back as he circled the ramen shop once, twice, and finally came back.

"Everyone," he mumbled, sliding back into the booth. He didn't need to say anything, really; Neku knew exactly what was up, just from the look on his face.

And then, "You gonna finish that, Nekkun?"

* * *

A few minutes later, Neku and Joshua found themselves standing around Dogenzaka Hill again. Now that they knew what to look for, it was everywhere – packs of Joshes, Nekus. Everywhere. Coming out of Cosmic Corner, giggling like ganguro and trying on dandy hats. Yakking away on their cell phones. Skipping off to A-East, tickets in hand and arms linked.

It was sickening.

Another thing to note - no matter where they looked, there were absolutely no females. No schoolgirls, no supermodels, no middle-aged mothers pushing strollers full of pink and frilly babies, no businesswomen on their way to work, no lolitas, no itas, and certainly no American exchange students. There were absolutely no girls. There weren't even little old ladies. Just Joshes and Nekus, as far as the eye could see...

"This is just..." Neku started after being winked at by the fifth Josh that day. He had tried to count them, and failed miserably. "..._weird_."

"It's completely bonkers," Joshua agreed.

"The funny thing is that there are all these Joshes, but the Nekus seem to be kind of uncommon," Neku observed, twisting his hair.

"Yeah... remember what that first one said? He wanted a 'Neku of his own,' wonder what that means..." Joshua was back on the High N Low game, since that usually helped him think.

"Maybe they're Persocoms," Neku said thoughtfully, watching a group of Joshes giggling over a Neku, who seemed to not mind as much as he should have. Rather, he appeared to be blushing, if the hazy pink light shining from under his skin was any indication. Neku felt the hairs on the back of his neck bristle indignantly. "Like, y'know, Chobits."

"You mean the Nekus?" Joshua said, looking up from his game. "Robots? Hmm... a veritable hypothesis, partner. But then, there remains the whole question of the Joshes. There shouldn't be more than one."

Neku shrugged. "Maybe they're clones. Like, y'know, Star Wars."

Joshua just looked at him. After a moment, he tucked his phone away, seeming to come to a decision. "Well. At least we know what's causing this interference. If everyone here has a god-modded phone like me, then there's definitely going to be some clashing signals. So unless we organize a mass vacation to the Bahamas, we won't be calling Mr. H any time soon."

"San-san," Neku said weakly.

"So... it's in our best interests to set up a base of operations." Joshua held up a pointer finger and flicked his hair back. "If only for the amenities. Beds, and the like."

Joshua was too classy to say "toilets," but that was clearly what he meant by "the like." Neku snorted. "Okay. How are we gonna do that?"

"How the rest of the mortals do it, I suppose. We find a motel."

"Hotel?" Neku repeated, disbelieving. The word took a moment to sink in, but when it finally registered, it hit Neku across the frontal lobe like a sock full of batteries. "H-H-H-HOTEL?"

"...What's wrong, Neku?" Joshua cocked an eyebrow.

Neku goggled at him, aghast. "W-we're in Dogenzaka! You know what kind of hotels these _are_, right?" He threw his arms out and gestured vaguely at the scores of love hotels lining the street. In case you weren't aware, those sultry cesspools of love and heartbreak were the pride and joy of Dogenzaka Hill.

Joshua's creepy purple eyes stared at him blankly. "...Of course I do, Neku. I'm the _Composer of Shibuya_, if you've forgotten."

Clearly, Josh didn't seem to get it.

Unless... it was all part of his plan...?

Neku's eyes widened at the sudden revelation. "No way, dude! No way in _hell_ am I renting a room in a love hotel with _you!_" he shouted, backing away in horror.

"I didn't ask you to!" Joshua shot back, narrowing his eyes. He took a step away from Neku, as though the very idea nauseated him too much to stand within fifteen feet of the other boy. "Good grief, Neku, what do you take me for?"

"But you said-"

Joshua scoffed and tossed his head in disgust. "Ugh... I said MO-tel, boy! As in 'mobile hotel!'"

As the sense of imminent danger left him, the tension melted from Neku's shoulders. The fact that Josh seemed just as repulsed by the notion as Neku was calmed the Proxy down a little, though he remained wary. "...There's a difference?"

Joshua gently pressed his palm over his face. "Oh, dear. You still have a lot of school left, don't you."

Neku scowled.

"A motel, you see, is like a hotel with hallways exposed to the air, designed to be easily accessed by people on road trips. Although, to my knowledge, they aren't that common outside of smalltown America."

"...Well, jeez. There can't be any motels _here_, then."

Joshua silenced him by pointing across the street.

Lo and behold, there was a blocky three-story building with too many windows and a sign reading "THE PIG SIGIL MOTEL." It was kind of run-down looking and quite out of place in the middle of Shibuya, but Neku was willing to forgive that if it had "clean lodgings" and "free Internet massage." Neku had no idea what an Internet massage was, but he thought it sounded pretty fine.

"Oh. Cool."

"Now, it may be a motel in name only. We'll just have to see for ourselves." Joshua shrugged. "Or, you know, we could go to one of those love hotels instead and stay there. At the end of the day, they're just hotels, and it's up to you to decide if any actual copulation happens in those disgusting chambers of fleeting passions. It'll just be more... awkward, I suppose."

"I refuse to let you take me to a love hotel, Joshua."

"Good answer." Joshua flipped his hair and smirked. "The motel it is, then?"

Neku gave his companion the thumbs-up. Joshua nodded shortly, and the two jaywalked like the punks they were over to the motel.

Joshua went over to mess with the receptionist, but they were busy with some sort of business, so Neku left him to it and went exploring.  
In Neku's opinion, the place wasn't that great. The rug was old, wine-red, and covered with mysterious stains. The wallpaper was creamy and peeling in places. He counted sixteen cracks in the ceiling, and decided the pea-green couch and chairs were unfashionable. (After the whole affair with the Game, Neku had become somewhat of a fashion authority.) There were a few potted plants tucked into tasteful places, but after discovering that they were made of plastic, he began to get bored.

He would have been content to merely hang back and listen to his music, but there was something wrong with it. Garbled pulses of static and strange, jumbled-up voices pulsed dully behind the familiar wubs of his precious dubstep. It felt as though fingers were reaching through his speakers and gently prodding the membrane of his mind, poking and stroking and begging to get in. It was enough to make him turn his mp3 player off for the time being.

But with nothing distracting him in his ears, his feet began to get antsy. Picking gingerly at the loose thread on his shirt, he paced quietly near the front of the lobby, noting the peculiar size of the stains. It looked like someone had dumped multiple buckets of steak sauce all over the carpeting at some point, jeez.

And there was this strange smell, lingering thickly in the back of his awareness - like a constantly present blanket, muffling the corners of his senses. It mingled with the perfume of the roses outside, which overpowered it to the point where Neku couldn't place what the thick, musky smell saturating was. All of it gave off a vaguely unsettling feeling.

Neku cast a glance back over his shoulder at Joshua, who was still bickering with the receptionist – another Joshua. Neku grinned. _This is gonna take him a while_. Joshua probably wouldn't mind if he wandered off for a little bit. After all, if they were going to be setting up camp, he might as well scout out the immediate area.

And here was an _intriguing_-looking door. Neku's eyes got all big and sparkly (metaphorically, of course) as he reached for the doorknob, opened it with a click and –

"Whoa..." was all he could say.

The door led from the lobby to a kind of cafeteria sort of thing. There was a bar with a bunch of tasty-looking fare, like tatsumi burgers and chicken nuggets and french toast and bowls of shoyu ramen and also some tasty-looking Boston crème pies and such. Nobody knew this, but Neku harbored a dear fondness for crème pies and cheesecakes. If he told anyone about this, they'd probably just pinch his cheek and gush over how _cute_ he was, but that alone was enough to make him avoid mentioning it. Neku did not like being called _cute_.

Next to the bar was a sort of trolley covered in plates and trays and things, and next to that was a soda fountain with a lot of jumbo cups. Neku noted with approval that the drink selection included absolutely no cola or orange juice, but rather... Viper drink, and (gasp) Mako Synergy? What the – it was like the place was _tailored_ for him!

Neku grinned slightly at the sight of all this splendor. Ah. The buffet of kings. Joshua had eaten half of Neku's ramen, so the Proxy figured he was allowed to sneak in, get a drink, and perhaps shyly court the creme pies.

"Members only," the receptionist snapped from afar, but Neku was the kind of kid who deliberately broke the rules, so he stepped inside anyway.

Neku was tottering straight for the dessert cart. Joshua tossed his head in annoyance. "He's just going to wander around and break things, you know."

"Tell me about it," the receptionist sighed. "We've got a whole colony of Nekus on the second floor. They're quite a handful, I must say."

"I can control him," Joshua said. "If you would just give us the room, I could _easily_ tether him down, so to speak. We won't be any trouble."

"A bondage party? Cute." The other him sniffed. "No way, Josué. I don't do business with..." Recepshua looked him over as one might a crusty old beggar stricken with syphillis, his nose crinkling delicately in disdain. "..._freshies_. And anyway, we don't have any free rooms."

"Look, dear. I'm not going anywhere," Joshua hissed, the bondage party comment sending up a few red flags. "I'm willing to stand here and argue 'till the sun keels over from old age. I'm patient... but _he_ isn't. And while I'm here, arguing, I can't police Neku, so nothing is stopping him from peeing all over the furniture."

"...Fine. Let's make a deal, shall we?" Recepshua tucked a wad of french-gray hair behind his ear and smirked.

Our Joshua folded his arms and decided he was quickly becoming cross with this kid's attitude. "Go on."

"I'll let you two stay here. Fact, you can have _my_ room. For free." That smirk was getting more evil with every syllable.

"And the catch?"

Recepshua licked his lips. "You have to share your Neku with me."

"Hand me down my silver trumpet, Gabriel," Joshua muttered under his breath. (This was a nasty Angel swear he had learned from Mr. H, by the way.) "What on earth does THAT mean?"

"Don't be coy. You know your ways," said Recepshua loftily. "As do I."

Joshua rubbed his temples and shot Recepshua a look of pure venom. Good lord, what a _dick_. "Suppose I'm an incompetent dingus and I _don't _know my own ways? Would you tell me?"

"You know. We all know. It's in the genes."

"Just spell it out for me, already."

Recepshua just gave him a withering look. "Ugh. Nekus are the most succulent, irresistible, mouth-watering, tender-hearted, sweet, and _adorable_ creatures in our world, fool. If you can't already tell just from being next to yours, then you ought to spend a little more _quality time_ with each other."

Suddenly, the realization of it all penetrated Joshua's fluffy brain like a brick through a convenience store window. Of COURSE. "...Ah. To... to clarify, you're suggesting that we're... together, aren't you?" Joshua was feeling sicker by the second. Recepshua's cheesy description bloomed heavily on his insides like a saccharine mold, nearly causing his stomach to fall apart from sugar-rot.

"Hm? If you don't want him, freshie, I'll gladly take him off your hands," Recepshua said brightly. "It's been a while since I've had a Neku, and believe me, I would have been all over the ones on the second floor, but they're all claimed."

"N-no, that's all right." Josh brushed his hair out of his eyes and tried to act natural. Fine. If this was one of _those_ worlds, then there was no helping it – and it was better to play along, anyway. "We're fine. I'm not sure if he'd consent, that's all..."

Recepshua giggled sardonically. "Oh, you poor little thing. Hee hee... _consent_... What Neku would ever... _c-consent? _Tee hee hee...!"

Joshua was absolutely floored this time around. NON-CON? No... NO. Big, big NO. "Er... um..."

Recepshua sighed. "Ah, freshies. You're so naïve. Ahem... I don't need him right now. Whenever you guys are ready for me, just give me a call. But rest assured, if I don't get my rent... well, let's just say that heads will roll, hm?" He pulled open a drawer and produced a small key, which he then pressed into Joshua's hand, chuckling to himself. "Here ya go, room 37. It's on the third floor. Hee hee... Have fun, freshie."

"Th-thanks," Joshua sputtered, snatching the key away and stuffing it in his pocket. "For the room."

"You're welcome." Recepshua gave him a little wave and returned to organizing his stack of what looked like meat recipes.

Joshua's lip curled in disgust and he stomped off towards the cafeteria to pick up "his Neku."

"Oh," Recepshua said after a moment. "In case you get a little excited...save me the cheeks, please. Hee hee, I loves me some cheeks."

Joshua really didn't know what that meant - and he didn't _want_ to know, so pretended he hadn't heard a thing.

* * *

Poor Josh. This was just not his day. If the conversation with his irritating clone had been uncomfortable, it was nothing compared to what awaited him in the cafeteria.

"N-Neku! What are you doing?"

Neku looked up, startled and guilty, his face covered with what looked like chocolate cream and... spit. He was sitting in one of the many chairs, with six or seven Joshes draped over him, tittering and tugging playfully at his hair. Or at least they had been, until Joshua had walked in on their, er..."moment." Now they were all whispering amongst themselves and shooting our Joshua dirty looks. "Uh," said Neku. "It's not what it looks like...?"

At this point, a flashback might be necessary.

While Joshua had been duking it out with his double, Neku had descended upon the buffet like a vulture. First, he'd filled up a soda cup with Mako Synergy and sucked it down gleefully, pronouncing it "good" to nobody in particular. That accomplished, his attention drifted to the kingly spread arranged under the heat lamps, particularly the dessert cart.

He had been examining the crème pies with a buyer's eye, assessing each one in terms of creaminess and crust quotient, and generally minding his own business, when he had caught the eye of a group of Joshes sitting in the corner.

"Hey," said one, elbowing another in the ribs. "He's alone."

"Perfect," hissed his buddy, and they all got up and prowled over.

Neku was trying to decide between a chocolate Boston crème and a raspberry swirl cheesecake when he felt an arrogant tapping on his shoulder. Neku turned around and jumped a little, because there was a Josh, smiling cheerily.

"I'm sorry, I saw you over here and it looked like you were having a bit of trouble deciding. Do you like cheesecake?" the Josh asked kindly, folding his hands behind him and tipping his head to the side. Maybe it was the odd lighting, but the Josh looked almost... _cute_. Almost.

"Er, yeah," said Neku, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly. He had no experience with _nice_ Joshuas, and as far as he knew they were a mythical creature, found only in storybooks used to seduce children into falling asleep, much like fairy princesses and unicorns. He couldn't help but feel a little suspicious, and so he backed away...

Another reedy voice piped up. "Well, well! What about chocolate?"

Neku whipped around and jumped a little again, because, while he was distracted, another Josh had crept up behind him unseen. He'd almost backed right into his weedy chest - gross. "Yeah, chocolate's... uh, good?" Neku said. He was a little confused now.

"Hee hee... have we got a treat for you, then~!" sang yet another voice. Neku whirled around and found two new Joshuas – or were those the old ones? ...Wait, what? One, two... damn, they were all over the place...

"Come with us, Ne-kun~!" Wha—another one? Crap!

Neku didn't have much of a choice – the Joshes had him surrounded. They kind of just walked over to a table and Neku was sort of swept along in the current. He couldn't help it.

"H-Hey! Damn it... I'm kind of in the middle of something, you know!"

Josh #1 giggled. "Oh, what? Getting cheesecake?"

"You don't want that stuff, it's mail-ordered garbage," scoffed Josh #4.

"Here," Josh #2 sighed, opening a box he was holding as the other Joshes all moved as one and somehow plonked Neku down in a cafeteria chair. "Have some of _this!_"

Again, Neku didn't have any real say in the matter – Neku had parted his lips to say something nasty, and Josh #3 had poked something in Neku's mouth. He had the immediate urge to protest violently, but then he became aware of the magical sensation spreading across his tongue.

It was rich, creamy, and thick as raw dough. It tasted – oh, it was the Soul of chocolate, refined to its purest form, a confectionery Angel's wing. The glorious taste melted on his tongue and left him craving more, more, more! Oh, bless the stars! Bless this world, this world that possesses such divine flavors!

It was the greatest chocolate cheesecake Neku had ever eaten. It was simple as that, and yet it was so much more. Neku gasped, breathless.

The Joshes leaned in expectantly. They were a little too close for comfort, and Neku would have been a little bothered if he hadn't been busy in Nirvana at the moment. "Well?" they asked in unison. "Do you like it?"

"It's... it's..." Neku groped for words.

"I knew it," Josh #2 mumbled, looking crestfallen. "He hates it, doesn't he?" There followed a flurry of tittering as Joshes 3-6 rushed to console him.

"N-no!" Neku blurted, sitting up suddenly. (He wasn't sure when, but at some point he had slumped over in a bit of a starry-eyed trance.) "It's... awesome! Fantastic!"

Josh #2 looked up, surprised. "Wha—really?"

"Best cheesecake I ever tasted," Neku replied solemnly. It practically hummed in his stomach, radiating a warm feeling of delight throughout his being.

"I... I made it myself," Josh #2 said, shyly.

"Would you like some more?" Josh #3 asked with a sly grin.

Neku nodded, fingers gripping the arms of his chair. He attempted to rise, to break free of the eerie circle fencing him in - "But, first, if I could just stand up-"

"Well, then..." Josh #3 turned to the box and scandalously dug his fingers into the cake, producing a huge, creamy wad of heaven that was waaaaay too big for just one bite. "Say _aahhh_~!" Neku paled slightly, squirmed, and tried to get away - but two sets of pale, unnaturally strong hands shackled him by the wrists and anchored him to the chair.

_Shit, shit! I should have run while I had the chance!_ Neku strained against the grip of the Joshuas flanking him, but he might as well have been trying to pry open iron manacles with a toothpick.

Josh #3 moved towards Neku with a very naughty smirk and gently smooshed the cake into Neku's mouth, which he had to open wide quickly - lest he get cake smeared all over his face. Josh #3 took his time, poking and pushing tenderly with his chocolaty fingers, until most of the creamy goodness was packed inside. Neku's jaw ached and his mind became fuzzy with impotent anger - but, hey, at least the cheesecake was tasty.

Meanwhile, Josh #1 began kneading his fingers into Neku's shoulders, and Joshes 5 and 6 teamed up to gently slip the headphones off his crown. Neku would have objected, but his mouth was stuffed with mounds of velvety cheesecake. It was so good, and there was just so much. Neku's eyes began to water from the intense, blissful flavor - surely, this is what Josh meant when he murmured creepily about being in paradise.

And, as beautiful as the flavor was, it was barely distracting him from the true horror grinding away behind the scenes - he had a harem of Joshuas draping themselves over him, for crying out loud! Digging their gross nails into his skin and breathing down his neck like a bunch of creeps - terrified chills rippled down his back, and he thrashed, trying to rip his shoulders free of the ghastly many-armed embrace of the Joshes. But their collective weight kept him pinned in place, and Neku could only scream silently.

Oh, but he woud have thrown them all to the floor, except... his arms felt weak and rubbery and strange, and all he had the facilities to do was grip the armrests harder and glare angrily at the group while he tried his best to swallow the obscene wad crammed in his mouth. Jeez, it was practically coming out of his nose. Did that freak stuff the entire cake in there or what?

But there were still leftovers, somehow. Josh #4 apparently had an idea what to do with these, so he scraped the goop off of Josh #3's hand and slid into Neku's lap.

Oh sweet gods. _No_.

Neku twisted his head away in vain, but Josh #4 caught him under the chin with his fingers, jacking Neku's head upwards like an auto mechanic might a car. Neku squirmed in horror, sure the hands holding him down would leave bruises.

Josh #4 lifted the cream-covered digits to his mouth and began tracing his lips with the stuff. His breath was hot and sweet and sticky, like a chocolate ghost that had been left out in the sun too long. Joshes 5 and 6 pressed their cheeks to the side of Neku's head, sighing into the shells of his ears.  
It was all too tactile for Neku. He kicked one of them lamely, just barely managing to nail him in the crotch - a brief sense of victory flooded him - but the Josh barely seemed fazed.

With the thick smell of the roses and the strange musk of the motel, the hands clamping him securely in place and the panic flooding his chest, Neku had been reduced to a sort of mindless, quivering lump of flesh. Plus, the chocolate cheesecake was thicker than wallpaper paste and he couldn't really protest with his jaws cemented together as they were. _Just as planned_, thought the Joshes.

"Oopsie," chuckled Josh #3, when he had finished licking his fingers clean of all the chocolaty goodness (as seductively as he could). "There's a bit on your cheek... dear..."

He leaned in and the next thing Neku knew, there was something warm and wet gliding softly over his cheekbone, and the ghost of warm breath on his skin...

It felt like someone had grabbed a bloated earthworm and dragged it across his face.

"Mrrrmm _hrrrm hrrm!_" If anyone around had been able to speak Muffled, it would have been clear that Neku was shouting "GET OFF ME;" however, there was no one with such capabilities around, so it wound up sounding like Neku was _really_ enjoying his tasty treatment, which spurred #3 onward.  
At that moment...

"N-Neku! What are you doing?"

Neku looked up, startled and guilty, his face covered with chocolate cream and Joshua spit. The six Joshes draped over him, now that our Joshua had walked in on their, er..."moment," were all whispering amongst themselves and shooting the newcomer dirty looks. He managed to choke down the rest of his mouthful, although he suddenly had lost his appetite, uncomfortably acquiring a hold on the situation. From his partner's point of view, this must have really been something to see. "Uh," said Neku. "It's not what it looks like...?"

Our Joshua crossed his arms and glared at the lot of them. "For goodness's sake, Neku, I can't leave you alone for one minute, can I?" His voice was so poisonous, several nearby spiders fell over, twitching and foaming at the pedipalps. "Hate to spoil your _fun_, Neku, but I finally acquired the room... and I have some things to discuss with you. In there."

"Uh, okay," Neku muttered, wiping some of the chocolate off his face. The Joshuas had released his arms, and his fingers prickled with pins and needles as blood returned to their grateful tips.

"Come on. You can play with your new _friends_ later," Joshua spat in a tone acidic enough to curdle milk. He spun on his heel and started off towards the stairs.

Neku got up and stumbled after him, feeling slightly castrated, as though he should have done something more to fight back. A dull pain throbbed in his arms, mocking him. Yeah, as if he actually could have done anything.

Running over the situation in his mind, he concluded that cheesecake must have magically turned him into a huge pussy. Scowling, he tore himself free of the throng of Joshuas - by now, their grip had relaxed - and dashed after his partner, feeling awfully guilty and angry with himself.

It wasn't his fault, though! He... he had been helpless. A victim!

He glanced down at his arms, at the dull purple blotches beginning to color his skin, and winced. A sliver of fear trembled in the back of his mind, but he shook it off, chasing after his irate parnter.

* * *

"We've been here an hour and you already have a harem," Joshua was hissing as they approached their room.

"They – they aren't a harem! _They_ attacked _me_," Neku protested, halfheartedly licking some of the sticky chocolate off his fingers. Despite his growing feeling of malaise, he didn't want the remnants of that delicacy of delicacies to go to waste.

"Hee, hee, hee, Neku. You crack me up. Did you know that I haven't taken a gym class in my whole life? I had to sit out, because I was a frail, sickly child. Still am. You know what that means, Neku? A _butterfly _has a better chance of taking you in a fight than I do."

"There wasn't a fight," Neku mumbled, feeling sicker every second. "They just-"

"No, there wasn't, was there? Enjoy the moment, indeed!" Joshua snorted and tossed his hair around some more. "Here we are – room 37." His tone was even, but Neku noticed that his hand was shaking when he unlocked the door.

The door swung open to reveal a bright, clean, overly-mediocre room with the same creamy wallpaper and Bordeaux carpeting job. There were two windows on the back wall, complete with chartreuse-and-chiffon-yellow-striped curtains. Under the windows was a big, ugly air conditioning thingy, and in the corners were those little iron vents that the conditioned air would rise from and your toes would catch in, positioned around the room with maximum airflow and tripping potential in mind. The room was lit by an imitation brass floor lamp, and there was a small bedside table with an alarm clock, a phone, a small coffee machine, and a cookbook. On the left wall were the doors to a closet and a bathroom, which was white and greenish, sort of, and had little novelty shampoos in it. Joshua's cold heart gave a little twerk in delight at the sight of them.

"It's not much," Joshua said, feeling the need to narrate. "But I think we'll manage. There's an ironing board in the closet, he said, and room service, and he wrote the number down on the pad for me..."

"There's only one bed," said Neku.

"Thank you, Neku." Joshua blew his bangs out of his eyes irritably. "I'll just sleep in the closet."

"Well, okay then." Neku considered this for a moment. "...Won't that be uncomfortable?"

Joshua glanced at him. "Since when has _my_ comfort ever bothered _you?_"

Neku fidgeted. "I don't want you to bitch about it later, obviously." _Ask a civil question... jeez..._

"Whatever. So-ho-ho-huUAAA-CHOOOOOOOO!"

Neku was only able to dodge the tsunami of snot that suddenly rushed him thanks to his extensive ninja training (prerequisite to being Japanese, you know).

"DUDE!" Neku shouted. "WHAT the hell was that? Revenge?"

Joshua sniffled. "Ugh, _disgusting_... Revenge? For what? Get down from there, Neku."

Neku pried himself off the ceiling and dropped down to rejoin his planar-jumping partner. "I thought you were going to teleport me into, like, a torture chamber world for a second there..."

"One - my ability to teleport is not purely ordained by sneezes, you goose. Two - why ever would I do that...?"

"Because of... you know," Neku mumbled sheepishly, wiping his sticky cheek. He figured that Josh would want to exact a sadistic revenge of some kind. Sadistic revenges were par for the course with Joshua, or at least it seemed like they would be.

"Oh. About that." Joshua stepped into their room and closed the door. He made sure to lock it with both the key and the chain ("In case the receptionarcissist has a master key," he explained) and then he strolled over and took a seat on the chartreuse bedspread. He fixed Neku with a serious look. "I have reason to believe that we've accidentally teleported into a s...slash zone."

"Does that mean we get to fight with sharp objects?" Neku asked, daring to dream.

"No, Neku. It means..." What little color there was in Joshua's face had long since abandoned ship. Currently, he was rubbing his face and looking about as comfortable as a Popsicle in the middle of the Sahara during a heat wave. "Er... well, basically... you like girls, right?"

"Uh..." Neku thought of Shiki and the guilty pangs in his stomach changed from needles to lances. "Yeah, I guess." But really! Why couldn't _Shiki _clones mob him with cheesecakes and back massages? Ugh...

"Well... the Nekus native to this world..._don't_," Joshua said as delicately as he could. "And the same goes for the... er... Joshes... as I'm sure you've found out." The Composer's normally arrogant voice was trembling slightly, and that scared Neku a bit more than what he was actually saying.

"...Wait, what?" He was struck over the head with the memory of Josh #3 licking his cheek... and made a strangled sort of noise in his throat as the pieces fell into place. "Are you-?"

Joshua took a deep breath. "This is a little unsettling, I know, but... yes, Neku, everyone but us is probably, in all likelihood... ah, um... well, gay. Not just that, though - let me rephrase. This is a world where all the Nekus and Joshuas, for some reason, are infatuated with one another in a coarsely sexual manner."

"No... no way! No! I'm not gay for you," Neku said, shaking his head. "I'm not! I refuse to believe it. You, gay for me? Okay, I can see that happening. But me, gay for you? No way."

Joshua waved his hand. "It doesn't really matter what you think, Neku. This is a different universe; they function on a different set of rules. I suspect it's a genetic trait, universal to the natives to this plane. Since they can't reproduce normally, they just clone themselves. Ergo, they're _all_ gay." A curtain of french-gray hair had fallen over Joshua's eyes, so Neku couldn't tell what he was feeling, but from the way his voice fractured painfully, it seemed that the idea didn't sit right with him either. "Gay _and _promiscuous, which seems awfully... trite, honestly."

Something else was bugging Joshua, outside of the whole "gay" thing, which honestly could be brushed off and ignored easily enough. The whole possible scenario that he had just outlined... It just didn't make sense, and something... something felt wrong to him, but he couldn't exactly place what...

He felt... scared, for some reason. His foresight prickled slightly, vaguely.

They sat in silence for a minute. Neku was mostly struggling to wrap his head around it all; Joshua was struggling to keep himself from shaking. Neither were very comfortable. At all.

Suddenly, Neku spoke up. "Hey, wait..."

Joshua looked at him. "What?"

"You said it was a universal trait, right?"

"Yeah, so?"

Neku cracked a big, goofy, boyish grin. "I wonder where they're keeping the la-dies?"

"Shut up before I smack you with a ruler."

* * *

**A/N:** **YGH MORE EDITING AND IT'S STILL PAINFUL FOR ME TO READ EVEN NOW HHH**  
Poor, poor, Joshua and Neku. What are they going to do? What will happen? Will they have fluffy, lighthearted romantic comedy-like misadventures as they slowly realize their LUV for one another? (no)  
The cheesecake thing...I'm never writing anything like that again, because I just discovered that writing it was painful. Like I was suddenly stricken with carpal tunnel and my joints were frozen and I got this awful taste in my mouth and I grit my teeth but I just couldn't go on. Looking back, I'm pretty sure that's what blasphemy feels like. Because I hate Josh/Neku, let me just say: _This is not Josh/Neku._  
You have been warned.


	4. In which Midnight Adventures are had

_**JOSHUA TRIPS**_

CHAPTER FOUR: IN WHICH NEKU AND JOSHUA HAVE A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE, part 1

Summary: After a mishap involving Joshua's poor balance and Neku's nasal lining, our heroes find themselves stranded in an alternate dimension with no easy way to get home. After discovering that the dimension is essentially the Josh/Neku homeworld, things are getting a little uncomfortable for them...

Rating: T for yucky stuff and Neku's potty-mouthiness

OF NOTE IN THIS CHAPTER: Joshua realizes why Recepshua gave him the room for free. Also, Neku trips. That isn't much of a paradox, is it.

Genre: PARODY/adventure

Although it might change later on...

* * *

Joshua sneezed six more times that evening, and by eight o' clock his nose was running laps around his face. He rummaged around in the bathroom cupboard for some kind of medicine that would put a stop to it once and for all, but there was nothing. "Hmph! Another thing that proves this dimension is completely ass-backwards – I always have Smilinol in my cabinets!" Joshua huffed to himself. He sniffled and grabbed a (his?) toothbrush and squeezed some toothpaste on it. But then - "_ACHOO! _Gaaah, crimony..." His hand had jerked with the power of the sneeze and now there was a huge toothpaste snake coiled around his hand. Joshua muttered some choice words and messed with the faucet, trying to wash it off. "Yes... _Completely_ ass-backwards... bonkers... absolutely bananas... wild nutty coco-loco explosion..."

"Uh-huh." Neku was laying on the bed, clicking through his music absently. It sounded like he was playing with a Geiger counter. After a while, though, he pushed his headphones off his head and sat up. "Hey, Josh? So if this is Gayworld, how come there's so many of us?"

"I told you, it's not Gayworld," Joshua spat savagely into the sink. "_Ptui!_ It's like...the Joshes are programmed to seek out Nekus. They're like missiles. Nekusexual missiles."

"Yikes," Neku muttered, looking out the window, a bored look on his face. The little knot in his eyebrows betrayed his inner torment, however.

Joshua was still prattling on. "If they were legit homosexuals, I'd imagine I and the other males would be getting about as much, ahem, _attention_ as you. No, the Joshes are after the Nekus specifically, and vice versa. Can't imagine _why_, though..."

"Maybe it's because Joshuas like to be the only Joshua around," Neku said after a minute. "Because, well, you know. Joshuas are _jerks_. Jerks that trap innocent bystanders in messed-up alternate realities."

Joshua picked at his teeth in the mirror, choosing to ignore that not-so-subtle dig. "Why do they fawn over you so lovingly, then?"

"Because I'm not Joshua," Neku said. "I'm not a jerk. I'm nice. It's a change of pace, I guess."

Joshua scoffed. And then sneezed.

"You okay in there?"

"Fine, fine, I'm fine..." Joshua mumbled, wiping his nose.

"See? I asked if you were okay. That's nice. If I were a Joshua, I would have made some rude, condescending comment about that sneeze or... something. Joshuas are not nice."

Joshua didn't really like that. "I _am_ nice, Neku. I'm _very_ nice. I make a _point_ to be nice, whether I like somebody or not."

Neku frowned. "You're not nice to _me_."

"I _am_ nice to you!"

"Are not!"

"Are too!"

"Are _not!_"

"Are _too!_"

"_Are not!_"

"Neku, are we going to squabble like toddlers or what?"

Neku flopped back on the bed and made faces at the ceiling. "I can't believe this," he growled after a while, clearly angry. Joshua kept flossing in silence. "This is just too much. Joshua, you had better figure out a way to get out of here, or I am gonna..." He made a violent gesture in midair. "...with hedge clippers, just watch."

Joshua had been chalk white for most of the afternoon, but if possible, he grew a shade paler. "That's a tad excessive, don't you think?"

"No, Joshua, _you're_ excessive... every time you show up, I get dragged into some big huge thing and you just constantly bitch and whine and mock... argh! At the end of all this, if I find out this was all some sort of gambit of yours..." He rolled over, muttering darkly.

"Uh, good night, Neku," Joshua sniveled, wiping his streaming eyes.

"'Night..."

Joshua sighed. It was probably very hard for Neku right now.

Heck, it was hard on Joshua himself.

* * *

For one thing, Joshua was not gay. He was asexual. But that's not really the point, since this fanfiction isn't about sexytimes anyway.

There was just a powerful, gut-twisting undercurrent of wrongness to the whole ordeal. His brain would simply not accept the "these Joshuas are just preposterously Nekusexual" theory – apart from the obvious reasons, there was something else. Something else was still bothering him; it was as if they weren't getting the whole picture, just small glimpses. The theory he had worked for now, but Joshua felt it was wrong.

Joshua supposed his brain was just too tired. And on top of everything, it sounded like he was coming down with something. These factors combined were enough to increase his natural paranoia, if only because Joshua _never_ got sick. Not anymore, at least. His body repelled pathogens and rejected parasites. He did not condone sickness. It simply was not allowed.

So why was he still sniffling like a dopey fourth grader? Joshua dabbed at his nose in a futile attempt to stem the flow. It was all so irritating, and his back hurt, and his head hurt, and the bruises on his face hurt, and he wanted to go home.

He wanted to grumble, too, but he kept a respectful silence, because Neku was trying to sleep. Joshua didn't need to have pillows thrown at him in this state.

That was the other thing. Neku. Neku was the closest thing to a friend Joshua had ever had. And... that friendship, as flimsy and nonexistent as it was, was something important, not to be tarnished by sloppy makeouts and gross stuff like that.

And now, this. This whole ordeal would probably grind all hopes of friendship into atomic space dust under the heels of its campy Kickin' Shoes, and there was nothing Joshua could do to stop it.

Joshua finished up in the bathroom and then wandered out into the main space. Neku was snoring away, spreadeagled on the bed with his headphones vibrating gently with the faint sounds of New Age music, the kind that zaps your strength and drags you into unconsciousness within seconds. A gentle breeze wafted forth from the open window, stirring the curtains gently. Neku's rock-hard bangs remained perfectly unfettered despite this.

Joshua shook his head and trotted off to the closet, which was in the corner. Next to the door was the floor lamp and a rather squat armory. These are important.

He opened the door and sighed. Oh, _brilliant_, it was full of junk. Wedged in the tiny space like pieces of a puzzle someone had gotten very frustrated with, there was a vacuum cleaner, an ironing board, an iron, at least ten button-downs of varying degrees of blue, and about three identical pairs of jeans, and a stack of nice shoes in the back on top of a sky-high pile of cookbooks.

Joshua frowned. These cookbooks...it seemed like an excessive amount, since he was notoriously terrible at the culinary arts. The government could have used his spaghetti to defend the prime minister, and his steak sauce had a bad habit of setting off Geiger counters and metal detectors. But then again, maybe these books were full of cake recipes. Cake was about the only thing Joshua could make without destroying approximately two city blocks, a baby, a few nice old ladies and a couple of pigeons.

It didn't really matter what was inside the cookbooks, though. What mattered was that they were taking up ungodly amounts of space.

However, Joshua was tired, too tired to care that much; so, he just shuffled the vacuum cleaner around a little and wriggled in, and then he slammed the door.

Big mistake.

You know how when you leave the window open, and then you shut the door, but it shuts a little _too_ hard? Normally, this does nothing but produce a slight tremor and an obnoxiously loud noise, right?

However, the floor lamp had a rather fragile sense of balance, and that slight tremor was all it took. It toppled over, but fell at such an angle that the top landed on the dresser, speared through the wood, and suddenly the lighting fixture effectively barred the door shut. It was a pretty heavy lamp, and Joshua was a frail little boy, and so it was abundantly clear to any onlooker that Joshua was as good as trapped.

Josh heard the thump and he felt an Ice Pillar stab at his diaphragm. He whirled around - or at least attempted to, sealed in the tight closet space - and tried to open the door, but it was no good. It wouldn't budge. Joshua immediately began banging on the door and shouting, "Neku! Neku!" But there was no answer. The Proxy was listening to New Age music, remember. Potent stuff.

Joshua slid to the floor, undead heart hammering in his narrow chest. Okay, so he was locked in. No biggie. He was planning to sleep in here anyway. Might as well get comfortable.

He wriggled around a bit, like a caterpillar wrapped in a chrysalis, trying to find a more relaxing position. He only succeeded in barking his shins and knocking the vacuum over so that he was crushed rather painfully into a sharp-cornered cookbook. Joshua resisted the urge to whimper. He was just having a bad, bad day. He had screwed up relations with the enemy party he'd been trying to forge an alliance with, teleported them into some crackpot dimension full of perverted, Neku-licking weirdos abusing his identity, received a number of direct hits to the face, squabbled with a rude receptionist, slipped in the shower, and locked himself in a closet. ("ACHOO!") And he had a cold. Things couldn't possibly get any worse, could they?

Right about then, he saw the spiders.

"Oh, _no_," Joshua moaned. "I should have seen that coming, I should have seen that _coming_..."

At first, there was only one. It was one of those big, ugly black ones, about an inch or so in diameter, and it was creeping around the vacuum handle. It looked like it was sniffing around for some soft pink fingers to sink its ugly fangs into. Joshua supposed he had disturbed it when he knocked the vacuum over - but knowing that did nothing to change the fact that he couldn't move right now and there was a big, pissed-off spider inches from his soft, pink fingers.

Joshua really did not care for spiders, frankly.

"Go away, go away now, shoo...!" Joshua moaned softly, wincing and twisting away from the hideous creature. "Oh, don't you dare bite... gy_UH?_"

He had just discovered another spider, crawling around on a nearby cookbook spine. It was just as big and black as the first one, if not even more so. Joshua cringed. He did _not _like spiders. As his eyes adjusted to the blackness, he – ohh, there was _another_ – and, ugh, another – and another – and – and – and –

Joshua thought his eyes might pop out of their sockets. No, no, no... There were about twenty spiders, all crawling around in the shadows, coming out of their little secret places and looking for boys to bite... Ohhh, _no_, there were _more_, and the more Joshua looked, the more he saw...his gaze roved up over the shirts hanging in the gloom, covered with tiny black spiders and big black spiders, and up to the hangers, which were dusted faintly with cobwebs, and then the... the...

If he hadn't been paralyzed with fear before, he was now.

For up in the corner of the ceiling, there was a sort of spider hell. It could have passed for a patch of black paint, if it had not been shivering and jittering and _moving_. They were everywhere – god, oh, there were hundreds of them... crawling all over each other... a massive, writhing, filthy swarm... but then, Joshua's heart stopped completely. Because there, perched on a stretch of cobweb so thick it looked like fabric, was the single largest, most revolting spider Joshua had ever seen - if that ghastly _thing_ could legally be called a spider, that is.

The vile creature was maybe a foot long – Joshua couldn't really give precise measurements at the moment, but it dwarfed all the other spiders; it was a hideous, knotty behemoth of a spider, a demonic, positively evil-looking _monster_, with eyes that shone and glittered strangely and horribly in the darkness. _That has to be fake_, Joshua thought. _It _has _to_...

He saw its leg twitch ever so slightly, and he thought he might faint.

It hunched over a faint puffy lump that vaguely registered in the back of his head as an egg sac, just hanging there, frightfully still... waiting... searching...

Joshua's stomach clenched and tried to escape through his mouth. It was _looking _for him. ...Ah – when he knocked over the vacuum, he had probably disturbed the spider nest, maybe even nearly knocked the spider's puffy, pus-colored egg sac clear off the wall... Joshua's heart leapt into his throat, shoving his stomach out of the way and sending it plummeting into a frigid abyss.

If he moved – if he made the slightest, faintest movement – the spider would see him. It would see him, and it would get him. Oh, sweet, merciful gods, it would _get_ him. It would probably jump off the ceiling and land on his face and – and – and –_ no, Josh, don't think about it, don't think about it, just relax and do not move,_ do not move...

He suddenly became aware of a crushing pressure building in his nose. Oh, god, no, not now, not – he tried to quell it, but it was absolutely no good and – his face exploded with the most violent sneeze of the day.

"KWAAH-CHOOOOOFH!"

And then –

"KWAAH-CHOOOOOAAAUUGHHF—HAAA—_HAA_—KWACHOOOOOOOAAAUGHRFLARLFLG!"

There were three. Three body-wracking, back-breaking, soul-crushingly enormous and just plain _loud_ sneezes.

Joshua sat there for a second, stunned, nauseous with fear. He had whacked his head on the ironing board and knocked a few cookbooks down with the sheer force of the sneeze, but those were trifle matters. He kept his gaze pinned on the giant gargoyle of a spider in the corner. It hung there for another second, and then – and then – it –

It moved, so suddenly, so quickly, it was like a jolt of electricity, and it was fast, and it was huge, and it just didn't seem right for something so sickeningly huge to be so terrifyingly _fast_, and it just kind of dashed out and -

And about then, Joshua passed out.

* * *

The second Neku's New Age playlist ended, Neku awoke. He sat up, yawned a little, and vaguely wondered where he was. Someone had replaced his desk with a big ugly air conditioning thingy... probably Joshua... but those chiffon curtains were a bit too disgusting, even for him... and why was Ramen Don outside his window...?

It all came back quickly. The hopscotch, the sneeze, the teleporting...the clones... Neku groaned. "Fuq yoo, Joshooa..." he mumbled groggily and pulled his headphones down. His ears were starting to hurt.

He glanced at the alarm clock on the bedside table, which read 3:14 AM. Neku had grown to hate that number, but he figured it was about time for a midnight snack, anyway. That was what he usually did at home when his playlist ended in the middle of the night.

Home. With a pang, Neku thought of Shiki, and his mom, and Beat and Rhyme and his cat, Jeanne, and... he made a funny little noise in his throat, a choked little moan of despair. _Despair... hopscotch has left me in despair..._

Oh, well. Thinking about snacks had made him hungry, and sitting around in his despair never did any good. Neku kind of fell out of the bed and staggered to his feet, stumbling over to the door through the thick, early-morning darkness. Well, at least this crazy place had an all-hours cafeteria. Maybe he could get his hands on some of that french toast. After a moment's hesitation, he put his shirt on, and then left the motel room. He really didn't want to get jumped by those Joshes again; who knew what they'd do to him when everyone was asleep?

He wandered down the hallway, rubbing his eyes. He had taken a shower, so most of his hair had come ungelled and was hanging down to his shoulders, making him look rather girlish - from the back, at least. The complex chemical formulas gluing his bangs together had yet to dissolve.

Anyway, he shuffled down to the landing and plodded down the stairs, feeling rather fuzzy and thick from sleep. This fuzzy thickness led to him falling down the stairs, rebounding off the wall, falling down the stairs again, coming to a stop, spitting curses as he staggered to his feet, tripping, rolling down the last flight of stairs and colliding with a potted plant.

Neku proceeded to shout the worst words in his vocabulary, which, while making him feel delightfully naughty, seemed to nearly wake up Recepshua, who was apparently living at his desk now. As it happened, Recepshua shifted in his chair and mumbled something about cheeks. Neku tiptoed past him as quietly as he could – he needn't have, since everyone knows Joshua sleeps like a dead man (HAR!) - and crept into the cafeteria.

Like the rest of the motel, the cafeteria was completely dark. Well, not completely, as there was a light coming from the kitchen. Hopefully that meant the cook was awake, and not that a colony of Joshes were plotting something that no doubt involved aphrodisiac and french toast. _They're all a bunch of goddamn creepers. I wouldn't put it past 'em_, Neku decided crossly, but he staggered drunkenly up to the door anyway and peeked inside.

There were no diabolical Joshes pouring Shakespearean love-lily nectar in the syrup. Instead, there was a quivering mound of gray flesh, heaped on a tiny, plastic, miserable-looking chair that looked close to snapping at any moment. Neku stared at the vibrating mound for a second until the realization dawned that he was staring at someone's back. Neku gulped and tried to sneak back out, but the door creaked obnoxiously loud at the worst possible moment and the enormous person turned around.

Aw, damn. It was the sheep reaper.

_Oh jeez, not this guy_, Neku groaned inwardly. He was trapped now, anyway. Yodai Higashizawa beamed at him.

"Greetings!" he boomed heartily, scaring the skittles out of poor Neku. "WELCOME TO MY KITCHEN!"

Neku jumped about three feet in the air. "Sh-shhhhh!" he hissed. "Dude, not so loud! They'll hear you...!"

"Who? Those pasty parfaits?" Yodai snorted. "No need to worry about the Joshua units, my friend. They're on the night cycle."

"Er, yeah, most people are," Neku mumbled, attempting to picture Joshua as a parfait and having a little trouble. "'Cause it's kinda, y'know, nighttime?"

"HO HO HO! I've always liked you Nekus more, anyway." Yodai patted a chair in front of him. "Go on, have a seat. Something troubling you, my little string bean?"

"I kind of just wanted a snack," said the little string bean as he settled awkwardly into the chair. Well, at least the Game Master didn't seem like he wanted to eat his jealous heart, or whatever. Then again, this meating - er, meeting - was a little out of Reaper context.

Yodai snorted again. "Baah! And rightfully so! You Nekus are all so frightfully thin." The huge man shook his head. "Ought to put some meat on those bones, you really should...well, you came to the right place, as I am the head chef of this establishment. What would you like?"

"...Got any french toast?" Neku asked.

* * *

A moment later Neku had been stuffed with powdered sugar and syrup and toast of the European persuasion. The author wishes they knew a different term for french toast, but they don't.

Anyway. Neku got to the second landing and realized something was wrong.

He heard voices. And scraping.

Neku looked up and squinted into the gloom of the hallway, a prickle of fear coming to life like a spider in the back of his brain.

Those voices sounded like... Joshuas. Yes, there was that distinctive, creaky rasp he knew and hated. That didn't seem to fit, given what Higashizawa had told him - they_ should_ have been asleep.

Frowning, Neku crept down the hallway, cautiously padding along until he found the door that the faint voices were coming from behind. With a strange sense of anxiety gripping him, he carefully pressed his ear to the wood and listened.

He heard himself – no, a Neku – saying something, he wasn't quite sure what. And then a Joshua. The thick wood of the door muffled everything beyond coherence, but Neku knew that reedy, eternally pubescent voice anywhere. It sounded like there was more than one of them, too, unless that particular Joshua was a systemic otherkin and referred to himself as "we" or whatever. Suddenly, there was the sound of something large scraping against the door, and Neku flinched away.

After a tense moment, Neku realized that they had dragged something in front of the thing to barricade it – at least, that's what it sounded like. He got down on his knees, _really _curious now, and put his ear to the crack between the door and the carpet.

"I assume you know why we called you here?" That was a Josh.

"I'm not ready," whimpered the Neku. Our Neku wrinkled his nose; he sounded so..._unmanly_, and we're talking about someone with Jesse David Corte's voice actor here. Hard to girl that up.

"Oh, believe me, you're ready." Another Josh? Or the same? Neku assumed it was another one, because he knew if he was ever not ready for something and he was being cornered by a lone Josh, that lone Josh was going comatose. Two...well, maybe not. Neku had never fought a Josh before, he didn't know if they were that strong, but...they were definitely heavier than he was, and maybe if one sat on him while the other went in for the kill...Neku nodded thoughtfully. Two Joshes.

"Hee hee, I suggest you get comfortable on that bed, Ne~kun..." Yeah, two Joshes...WAIT.

WAIT.

WAIT.

WAIT.

"I'm not ready! G-give me some more time, I'm just..."

"Fair's fair, Ne~kun."

"We gave you what you wanted, now you give us what we want..."

"No! No! I didn't want it! I didn't-"

"Oh, don't kid yourself."

"You loved it, and you know it. Now it's time to pay up."

"No! No, please..."

"Think of it this way: we're simply taking back what is ours."

"You came to us willingly, and you know the rules of the game..."

"No! Hey! Hey, wait! Wait! Just...NO! NO NO NO NO! PUT THAT AWAY, NO, NO, NONONONONONO-"

"Muffle him."

"Gladly."

"HEY, HEY WHAT ARE YOU – mrrghf! MMRR! MMMMMRRRRGH!"

"Ugh... Stop twisting, you'll only make it worse for yourself..."

"Just close your eyes and relax, Ne~kun..."

"MMMMMRRRGH!"

Our Neku backed away from the door as quickly as possible. He didn't need to hear any more of that.

So of course, he missed the part where the muffled screaming mysteriously stopped, and the soft, wet noises began. He was running up the stairs as fast as he could, heart hammering in his throat and knees shaking like an acrophobic giraffe.

This place was _insane_.

* * *

A/N: fuck me I write shitty endnotes

dicky donkey doo wah, _seriously_


	5. In which Midnight Adventures drag on

_**JOSHUA TRIPS**_

CHAPTER FIVE: IN WHICH NEKU AND JOSHUA HAVE A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE, part 2

Summary: For once in his life, Joshua tries to be nice to Neku and plays hopscotch with him. This backfires horribly, as Joshua accidentally transports the two of them to an alternate dimension which happens to be the homeworld of the Josh/Neku pairing – at least, they think it is.

Rating: T for yuckiness and mood whiplash that should be setting in soon...

OF NOTE IN THIS CHAPTER: Neku takes a page out of Sho's textbook (ba-dum TISH). Joshua takes a shower and is not invited to a barbecue.

Genre: Parody/Adventure

Again, subject to change, perhaps?

* * *

Neku ran up the stairs, down the hall, and practically fell through the door. "Josh! JOSH!"

He ran over to the closet, and for the first time encountered the fallen floor lamp, blocking the door. "What the—when did this happen?" he demanded to know, although nobody was around to reply. Neku tried to move the lamp off of the door, but the thing was...it was a very heavy lamp, one of those that take a team of horses to haul out from the Home Depot to your car. And, let's be honest here – Neku wasn't exactly a Dragonball Z candidate when it came to musculature. Neku growled in frustration, rolled under the lamp, and stood up very quickly intending to push up on the metal shaft with his back; he bonked his head instead. Correction – he smashed it brutally against a nearly-solid steel pole with a sickening crack that made the Joshes next door have nauseating dreams about brain damage. He twisted his face up in RAGE and tumbled out from under the lamp, spitting naughty words that a fifteen-year old shouldn't have access to. And for that matter, neither should you – hence the censorship. We'll cut to the end of his furious tirade of fury for time's sake.

Bear in mind that Neku was tired, scared, under the influence of RAGE, and also running solely on french toast and maple syrup. Also, a little-known tidbit about our protagonist – Neku Sakuraba's kneecaps are twice as sharp and durable as trench spikes, meaning that he could fight off a zombie invasion by the collective kneeing of the undead legions through the face. Factual information.

"Son of a – PROXY POWERS, ACTIVATE! TELEKINESIS, I CHOOSE YOOOOOU!" Neku bellowed, throwing his head back with a howl of RAGE. He seized the lamp pole in his furious fists and cracked the shaft in half over his knee. He then proceeded to toss the bottom half of the lamp to the side, since the weight had been kneed into clean, exact halves and Neku could handle a seventy-five pounder more easily. After the crunched remains of the floor lamp had been deposited in a heap on the floor, Neku flung the closet door wide open.

He was greeted by Joshua, who came tumbling out of the closet with a bloody scream of pure, unbridled terror.

Now let me tell you something about Joshua. We've already established that his voice is reedy and prone to cracking. We know this. But Joshua's scream? A scream of pain, yes, we've heard – it's kind of a constricted, guttural wailing that sounds not unlike the sounds that are heard when one ignores the girdle on Marley-dono's door - "wwaaAAAAA_**AAAAUUUUUU**__GHHHHHHAUUAAOOUUU_!" But a scream of pure, unbridled terror? That has never been heard by anyone, simply because Josh is tough as nails and ain't afraid a' nuttin'. He even went to intensive therapy after reading that one fan fiction, so now a hemophiliac with high blood pressure could commit seppuku on the floor in front of him and he wouldn't bat an eyelash – well, he might yell about the stains on the carpet and blood-borne illnesses and how Mr. H will have to take him to get an HIV test and_ gee, I wonder what they'll think about __**that**_ and how society as a whole is just trying to screw him over and turn him into a campy flamingo and how he will be in his room, playing with his model trucks, thank you very much, and all sorts of things; but that's not really the point. The point is, Joshua just doesn't _emit_ screams of pure, unbridled terror. It's far too Boeotian for him.

So the noise that just now erupted from the bottom of Joshua's diaphragm just now was without comparison. I previously described it as bloody, only because Neku's eardrums ruptured from hearing it, and the arteries in the back of Joshua's throat exploded from the vibrations. But now I realize that 'bloody' just doesn't do a scream like that justice, so with my apologies, I will attempt to describe his scream more accurately for the benefit of those who think a 'bloody' scream just isn't that impressive. Here we go.

Imagine the sound of a harpy in the throes of death. Now imagine that, if you will, with a companion choir being shot repeatedly by a maniac with a machine gun who is having his spine slowly ripped out from behind by a howler monkey which is being mauled by a werewolf whose head has been stuffed in a paper bag while his toenails are ripped out by an opera singer who is being beaten to death by Steven Tyler and Danny Gokey while they sing the end of Dream On live in front of a screeching audience. All while Konishi is scraping her nails down a blackboard, and some retard is watching a compilation of the loudest, most jarring, and just plain awful screams ever to be recorded on YouTube - and the fool has their volume turned up to maximum, of course.

You now have the faintest inkling of what Thanksgiving at my house is like. Take that, crank the power level over NINE THOUSAND and multiply that by infinity. Twice.

That's Joshua's scream of pure, unbridled terror.

You can imagine Neku had practically pissed himself ("practically," a word which here means "excessively") at the sound. Because Joshua NEVER screams. Unless he's being_ forcibly wiped from existence_, Yoshiya Kiryu does not scream. And never out of fear. Maybe if he charged into battle in a red pickup truck, armed with a Jabberwock Eye Staff and chainsaw nunchucks and also a Guy Fawkes mask. Maybe if he was having his spine ripped out from behind by a howler monkey. Maybe if he had front row seats to Supermask vs. Metalliclaw. Maybe if he was simply extremely pumped for a brawl. And even then, he'd be far more likely to shout casual suggestions ("Why don't you just _die?_") at the top of his lungs.

So what in the world brought on the scream of pure, unbridled terror? What in the world could make Joshua - who had the power to raise the dead and nuke rhinos with heavenly laser beams, let's not forget - what could make him scream?

Neku found out shortly after he glanced at the back of Joshua's head.

"Oh, sweet holy mother of fff-" Neku muttered, pupils dilating at the sight of it. If that unholy _thing _had been clinging to the back of _his_ head...oh, dear, merciful God, he would have been screaming too.

Joshua came tumbling out of the closet, but he scrabbled around for less than a second before he launched himself in the direction of the bed, which he rebounded off of and used his momentum to careen into the bathroom, all the while screaming bloody, broken, blue murder. "_GET_ _THEM OFF ME!_" Almost instantly after Joshua had vanished from view there arose a great clamor of things being knocked around, and then Neku heard the shower ignite.

There followed a different sort of scream. "...nnneeeEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHH! COLD!" And then a wet sort of _schlop_ noise, the sound of claws being pulled out of flesh, and a _thwap_ as the limp body hit the base of the bathtub.

Allow a three second grace period of silence, while Joshua turned around and saw the creature writhing near his foot. "EEK!" And Joshua came pelting out of the bathroom again, and he collapsed in a wet heap on the bed, shaking violently.

About then, Neku saw the other spiders swarming out of the closet in droves. He joined Joshua in huddling fearfully under the blankets shortly thereafter.

"GOOD GRANNY," Joshua shouted, his voice splintering on the _'_gra'.

"WHAT THE HELL," Neku agreed.

"SWEET BEANS IN A BASKET," Joshua raved.

"WHAT THE HELL," Neku agreed.

"HOLY BUSTED FLUX CAPACITOR DIPPED IN A BUCKET OF TABASCO SAUCE," Joshua roared, nearly cracking in half with the intensity.

"Now that's just silly," Neku said.

"I know..." Joshua sighed ruefully.

And then they remembered the spiders and went back to screaming their heads off.

After roughly a whole minute of that, some semblance of sanity came back to the situation when Joshua sneezed and reminded half of Shibuya that he was sick.

"L-look at them!" Neku moaned, pointing at the rivers of spiderlings skittering all over the walls and the carpet. "It's like some horrible _movie!_"

Joshua's voice had shattered into hoarse shards, and he was clearly long past caring. He chanced a look at the spiders and sniffled weakly. "It was on my NECK, it was on my NECK, I woke up and that THING was on my NECK..." he croaked, wiping his nose and burying his wet face in the blanket.

"Good god, it's the s-spider apocalypse!" Neku threw his hands in the air and waved them around a bit for effect. If you took a look at his face, you'd see he was dead serious about it, though.

"Arachnocalypse," Joshua groaned.

"What are we gonna do?" Neku shouted, flailing. "We – we gotta get rid of 'em!"

"Yes...And as Composer, I volunteer to do the deed..." Joshua said suddenly, sitting up straight.

"Huh? Really?"

"...BY PROXY!" And Neku was booted off the bed.

"H-HEY! NOT COOL!" Neku tried to clamber back on before the spiders smelled his delicious french toast-infused organs and decided it was suppahtime. "DUDE!"

Joshua stuck his foot in Neku's face and howled, "MY DEAR, YOU MISUNDERSTAND - I'LL HELP YOU ONCE THAT _THING_ IS DEAD." Joshua gave a little push with his leg and Neku went reeling.

Neku staggered to his feet, noticed the close proximity of his organs to the spiders, jumped about seven feet over to the bathroom door, and grabbed his lavender Kickin' Shoes. "FAK YOO, JOSHUA," Neku yelled, flipping Joshua off as viciously as his finger could handle.

The bathroom was suspiciously quiet and still. The novelty shampoos lay in disarray on the counter – Joshua had clearly bumped into the sink in his blind terror – and the toilet plunger had been knocked out from behind the throne. Neku imagined Joshua had spasmed about while he tried to get to the shower handle. Speaking of the shower...Neku swallowed a scream. He knew what awaited him in the porcelain bowels of that washtub. The Thing, in all its godawful glory. But he was equipped for battle, was he not? Neku hefted his big-ass shoes, ready to chuck them at the tangle of limbs and fangs that could only be lurking somewhere around the drain. With one final, strained prayer, Neku peeked into the bathtub.

It was empty.

A cold, heavy numbness struck Neku in the gut. Wha—where was it-?

A faint skittering overhead told him, but it was too late. Neku looked up, and the last thing he saw were eight legs and a thorax coming at him like a bullet train.

Joshua was busy toweling his hair with Neku's blankets when Neku came charging out of the bathroom, the Thing clamped to his features like a facehugger. Neku ran into the wall and began repeatedly bashing his face into it, until the many legs released their vicelike grip on Neku's cheeks and the Thing crumpled to the floor. It was not dead, however, no – it was on the retreat, to the shadowy closet Hell from whence it came – no doubt to assess his and his Proxy's weaknesses and chart a second assault –

Well, Joshua was having none of it. He threw the blankets aside, jumped off the bed, tore Neku's shoes out of his hands, and stuffed them on his feet. And then Joshua spun around and charged the Thing, leaping just before collision. He came down like a meteor, impacted the Thing into the carpet with a crunch, and began stomping like crazy. "Ha-AAAGH!" he roared, still grinding the wretched thing under his heel long after it had lost any resemblance to anything but a pile of greenish-brown oatmeal.

"Stop! Stop!" Neku shouted, spitting out spider hairs. He shoved the livid Joshua off of the mushy spider corpse. "Leave some for me, ya big cream puff!"

Joshua ripped the hideous purple boots off his dainty feet and shoved them into Neku's skinny arms. "Be my guest!" he snarled.

Neku threw himself at the Thing and stomped away. He was even more vicious than Joshua had been, if that was even possible. But that may have been thanks to the face fulla' alien wing-wong. Or something.

When the two of them had exacted their vengeance, they both looked up and realized something.

"Neku...where are all the little spiders?" Joshua asked worriedly. Neku had no idea.

Neku looked around at Joshua's behest, but there were none in sight. There weren't any in the closet, there weren't any in the armory, and there were none on the ceiling...

"Where d'ya think the little buggers went?" Neku growled.

Joshua shrugged. He was going to suggest that Neku check the armory again, but he was interrupted by two fists pounding on their door. Both he and Neku nearly jumped out of their skin. "Wh-who is it?" Joshua shouted, his voice still in pieces – much to his topaz, Adonis of chagrin. "We're kind of busy here!"

"Could you keep it down?" chorused twin reedy Joshua voices. "Some people are trying to sleep!"

They sounded oddly thick, and slightly sticky, almost as if they had been eating barbecue. Joshua thought that hardly qualified as sleeping, and now he wanted a brisket sandwich. Curb-stomping spiders made him_hungry_, dammit. "Okay, okay, fine, we'll _keep it down_..." Josh flipped his hair irritatedly, but remembered it was still besotted with icy water. Too late – he got a wet slap in the face. From his own hair. This was just _not _Joshua's day.

"Much appreciated," and "Thank you, dears," were the huffy replies, and then the sound of muttering as the pair of Joshes trotted away. Joshua curled his lip. He wished people would tell him when they were having a midnight barbecue. That was just rude. Joshua _loved_ barbecue, and those twerps ought to know that better than anyone.

"Those pansies," Joshua spat bitterly, and sniffled miserably. He glanced at Neku, who was standing there frozen, as if struck by lightning – or perhaps a sudden revelation.

"...Oh yeah! The spiders made me forget, but I needed to tell you something..." Neku said faintly, his eyes wide as saucers and staring into space. "About the Joshes..."

"What?"

"I went down into the kitchen to get a snack, right? And Yodai was there. And he told me that you could be as loud as you wanted, but the Joshes wouldn't wake up...it's like they're not allowed to, until like, seven o'clock, I think. In the morning. They're out like lights from nine to seven, he said." Neku made a face. "But, well, it was _Yodai_. He said they were...uh, expired like milk, or something..." Neku shuddered involuntarily at the thought of a "spoiled milk Joshua."

Joshua folded his arms. "But that's not true..."

Neku lifted a finger. "BUT. I was walking up the stairs and I heard these two Joshes corner a Neku...and they...er..." He trailed off into unintelligible mumbling.

"Um, what did they do, Neku?"

"Uh, I don't know exactly, but it sure...sounded...like...uh..." More muttering.

Joshua narrowed his eyes. "Were they having a barbecue?"

"Um. Not exactly." Neku screwed up his face as if the mental images were causing him pain. "They...they did something to him, anyway...but Yodai said that a Josh will go into a comatose state during the, uh, 'night cycle,' unless they've been, er..._activated_. And um, I couldn't get him to elaborate on that point."

Joshua didn't know what to think about that.

In the awkward silence that followed, both Composer and Proxy became aware of how bone crushingly tired they both were. Almost at once they were stricken with near-simultaneous jaw-cracking yawns and bleary eyesight. Joshua sneezed once or twice, for good measure.

"So, uh." Neku blinked slowly.

"Bedtime," Joshua said thickly, wiping his nose.

"Yeah...well, there weren't any spiders in the closet, so, uh..."

"No way, Sakuraba." Joshua fixed him with the stoniest look he could. "I am _not_ going back in that hellhole. Not if you _paid_ me."

"Uh..."

"And I am NOT sleeping on the floor, before you even bother to - ACHOO - suggest it. Ugh...that one hurt...ahem. What if the spiders come and have their revenge? No thank you, I'm going to be safe in that bed."

"Er, but_ I'm_ in the bed...?"

_"Er, _but _I'm_ not fat, and neither are you - and besides, that baby's a Queen," Joshua remarked, eying the bed with a hungry glimmer in his eye. It had nothing to do with the skinny boy sitting on top, and it had everything to do with the feather mattress – but Neku had no way of knowing that. "You can share with me, Nekkun..."

"No thanks," Neku snapped, and he proceeded to take up as much mattress space as he could. It wasn't that hard, because Neku had long spindly limbs and a pretty good reach.

Joshua didn't care. His thoughts were becoming disjointed and choppy. Bed. Blankets. Back support. Pillows. He backed up, pawing the ground with his shoe. Queen-sized. Comforter and quilt set. Bed. Pillows. _Bed._

"Hey, what are you – OOMPH!" Joshua threw himself on top of the bed, and also Neku, who got the air knocked out of his lungs. Joshua wriggled around for a minute, looking for a spot without a leg or an arm on it to curl up on, and for Neku, it was rather like being flattened by a giant, wet caterpillar. Or perhaps a carrion crawler. Joshua found a free spot and kind of expanded into it, crushing Neku's hand in the process. Neku made a strangled noise.

Joshua rolled over and smirked. "I win."

"Great," Neku groaned. "Can you get off my hand? You're compacting it with your fatness...ya big cream PUFF."

Joshua rolled over again so that he was compacting _all _of Neku. "If I were fat, THIS is how it'd be!" he growled, digging a damp elbow into Neku's ribs and getting his cold, wet hair all up in Neku's face.

Neku protested and shoved Joshua off, but like a big ol' Daruma he just came rolling back. Neku frowned and kind of thrashed around until Joshua was off and he was sitting up. Joshua tried to roll him over again, but Neku was quicker, and after a second they were locked in a brutal wrestling match. Unlike pro wrestling, however, the fight wasn't scripted, and there was no referee.

"Geroff, Neku!" Joshua wriggled in his grip, twisting around so he was face-to-face with the other boy. Maybe he could finally put all that time he spent watching pro wrestling to good use...

"No...urk...way!" Neku had just been kneed in the stomach. Rather uncomfortably.

Joshua had not yet gotten in the zen-like state of mind required for wrestling, so Neku found himself in control for a few seconds. But then Joshua kind of pelvic-thrusted and Neku was thrown off. Neku bonked his head on the wall – in the exact same spot where he had been attacked by the lamp – and he snarled, but got right back up, only to find himself flipped around and through a blur of arms and legs he wound up bent into a full-nelson, hissing and spitting. Neku struggled against the wet arms holding him back – they were slippery! How come he couldn't get out? This was infuriating - he almost _felt_ Joshua smirking at him.

"Ready to share yet, Nekkun?"

Okay. That was IT. It wasn't a playful little tussle anymore. It was personal.

Neku gave Joshua's wet hair a merciless yank, and was released from the hold suddenly. He whirled around and grabbed Joshua by the neck, mashing his face into the bed. Josh flailed around – Neku kind of climbed on top to hold him still – Joshua sat up – Neku's fingers slid over the wet skin and he rolled off with a few choice curses, and he was suddenly in a headlock. What the...? Neku hadn't lost his head yet, so he elbowed Joshua viciously in the gut and threw himself off the bed.

Neku staggered to his feet, ripped the headphones off of his neck, and threw them to the ground. Then he turned around, and saw with no small amount of satisfaction that Joshua was rocking back and forth on the bed, gasping. Josh looked up at him, murderous. Neku cracked his knuckles, and launched himself back into the fray with a body slam.

There followed a brief but violent scuffle. It involved hair-pulling, scratching, one instance where Joshua was suffocating and licked Neku's hand to get it off his airway, another where Neku bit Josh on the ankle when he nearly got kicked in the face, numerous attacks to the crotch, numerous death threats, an impressive array of suplexes that Joshua was able to knot Neku up in, and one time when Neku had Joshua wrapped up in a crushing bear hug, and Joshua managed to escape, climb up on the headboard, and flying-tackle Neku's miserable self and then whale away on his face.

Neku, for his part, caused Josh quite a bit of pain, but by the end he had been twisted into a pretzel at least a dozen times and had quite a few ugly bruises. Joshua already had a bunch on his pretty face from earlier, but after the dust settled he was positively covered in them, and although they weren't so nasty as Neku's, he ached all over now. And he'd bent a toenail, to boot. The winner? Well...

The fact was that the bedposts and the wall had done more damage to them then they had to each other. But neither was willing to admit it.

This was how sleep found them: Joshua had Neku around the neck with the intent to cut off jugular blood flow; Neku was dead-set on pulling Josh's cheeks off.

In perfect synchronization, Neku and Joshua both felt the strength run out of their arms and then the fighting spirit was gone, as if it had been sucked away by the wings of Hypnos, all like, _whoosh_. Joshua flopped back on his side, and Neku kind of collapsed on his. They each took a moment to collect themselves, catch their breath, the works.

"I guess we can share," Neku yawned. "If you stay on your side."

"Zzzzz," said Joshua.

"...Hmp-" Neku conked out mid-snort. How silly of him.

* * *

Elsewhere, in the backroom of the motel (it had a backroom, yeah; purely for storage reasons, of course) a very certain group of six was sprawled out in various places. They were all fast asleep, and the looks of annoyance on each of their faces said they'd been the middle of something important - sleep had apparently found them at a very inappropriate time. Nine o'clock, PM, to be exact – they had all dropped off at the exact same time, as if some cosmic force had mercifully decided that was enough jerking around for one day and cut the power.

Josh #1 was slumped over in the corner, hands curled limply around a clipboard. Josh #2 was resting his head on Josh #1's lap, a bubble of snot coming out of his nose and a head murky with dreams about chocolate cake recipes. Josh #3 was using one of the myriad cookbooks as a pillow and Josh #4 as a blanket. Josh #5, the recorder of the group, had a smudge of ink on his face, a pen in his hand, and was drooling all over the records of what had apparently been a meeting. Finally, Josh #6 was curled up, catlike, in the arms of an old, grandma-type chair positioned in roughly the center of the group, snoring away.

Behind #6's chair was a whiteboard. It was covered in impossibly neat rows of kanji. The author doesn't have the faintest of clues as to what these squiggly pictures meant, seeing as how the author only knows the characters for _na, ru, to, sa, su, ke, ku,_ and _ra_. Wait...wait...there seemed to be a lot of _ku_s on the board...wait...hold on, let me babelfish this...

...Aw, screw it. I'm calling on the omniscient knowledge of the third person to bail me out here. Ahem. Processing...processing...click!

Aha! The whiteboard was covered in...well, there were many different things, really – too much to describe here. But the three headers were as follows: Targets, Attack Plan, and Recipes.

The Joshes slept on, with an air of irritation strong about them, as they impatiently waited for seven o'clock to come.

* * *

A/N: Shorter than the other chapters, yes. However, we're beginning to approach the true plot of this story. Break out the champagne, boys.

Joshua: Yes, sir. :'D *clink*

Neku: -_-;; *wiping his shoes off*

I saw a spider in my sink the other day. My survival instincts flared into life and told me to KILL. So I ignored it.

Next chapter: Neku and Joshua embark on a shopping adventure! WHAT WILL HAPPEN?

Fluff? Tears? Absolutely NOT.

Don't worry, Joshua. You may be suffering now, but later...I'll make it up to you, I swear. D:

Oh, and about Neku's kneecaps? Totally true. Look it up, it's on page 56 of the game manual in bright red lettering, next to the part about Joshua's pickup trucks and Shiki's lactose intolerance.


	6. In which 104 is full of Vegebles & Books

_**JOSHUA TRIPS**_

CHAPTER SIX: IN WHICH NEKU AND JOSHUA EMBARK ON A SHOPPING ADVENTURE

Summary: Joshua and Neku have accidentally landed in an alternate world full of copies of themselves, who seem altogether far too apt to do strange things with each other... It's the second day since they've landed, and Neku and Josh already want to get the hell outta here. And step one is gathering information...

Rating: T for yuckiness and bad stuff in general...nothing too terrible.

OF NOTE IN THIS CHAPTER:

Genre: Parody/Adventure

…OH YOU KNOW THIS ALREADY.

* * *

The next morning, Neku awoke to the sounds of birds chirping, the drone of cars on the street, and someone breathing wetly in his ear.

His eyes snapped open and he resisted the urge to shriek, because there was Joshua, all bedroom eyes and suggestive giggle, with his nose a hair's breadth from Neku's own. He was under the blankets with Neku, sprawled on the carrot-top's bony ribcage and smirking. "G'mornin, Neku-kun."

"G'mornin."

"G'mornin."

"G'mornin."

"G'mornin."

"G'mor-"

"YAAAAAGHH!"

Neku thrashed around under the blanket until Josh and all six of his heads were thoroughly surprised. Unfortunately for him, they didn't even budge – Neku weighed around ninety-something pounds, while each Josh was worth about one hundred ten. That meant that scrawny Neku was hopelessly pinned beneath 660 collective pounds of jackass. "Neku-kun, that's no way to treat your friends," Josh #1 chided gently, poking him on the nose. He was the one under the blankets with Neku, who by this point had gone into paralysis and was frantically searching for an escape route. There was none.

How did they get in? (Neku and Josh had left the door unlocked during their...adventure last night.) Why were they here? (To seduce Neku, of course.) And more importantly...where was Joshua, and why hadn't he put a stop to this? (Well...) Neku ground his teeth, partially because the parentheses weren't answering him, and also because he figured that smug bastard was probably standing around in the corner, watching. And getting off on it. Gaaah.

"We brought you breakfast!" chorused 2-6, holding up a familiar white box.

All other thoughts went soaring out the window. "Oh? What is it?"

"Cheesecake!"

"...Really?" Cheesecake? FOR BREAKFAST? "It wouldn't happen to be...chocolate cheesecake, by any chance?"

Josh #2 grinned shyly. Neku noticed there was a dusting of flour on his cheeks and a smudge of cocoa (!) on his shirt. "Well...we didn't know exactly what you like...and...you seem to like the chocolate kind, so..."

"Sure, sure, whatever is fine, just as long as it's cheesecake," Neku said, trying to hurry this along so he could cram the stuff in his mouth and get it over with. As an afterthought, he added, "Oh, and you know, I can eat it myself." He glared at Josh #3, who winked.

Shuuuudddeeeerrrrggghhh.

* * *

While Neku ate his cheesecake, Joshes 2-5 climbed on top of him and began massaging. Josh #1 was about to go after them, but Josh #6 grabbed him by the collar and pulled him down to the foot of the bed to work on Neku's feet.

"I see you're losing faith in our system," 6 said quietly.

"No!" 1 exclaimed as softly as he could. His ears were turning pink, 6 noticed – a telltale sign of discomfort. 6 knew Joshua's habits like they were his own. (ba-dum TISH)

"How else can you explain your performance lately?" 6 shook his head, smirking unkindly. "And that outburst at the conference last night...tsk, tsk..."

"No, no, I..." 1 busied himself with Neku's toes. "I'm not..."

"It's almost as if you don't want to win...like you're trying to drag us down..."

"No! I would never!" 1 was appalled by the thought of it, 6 noticed. Or...was he? Joshua was a very good actor.

6 narrowed his eyes. "How do I know you're not lying? I know you're new to this, but I'm not stupid; you, of all people, should know that, and yet you're acting like I am, trying to deceive me. Such insubordinate attitude! And you know we can't have _that_ in the pack..."

1 looked quite uncomfortable. Typical freshie, 6 thought with a note of disdain.

"So, if you don't want to be erased, then prove to me you can't be spared." 6 licked his lips. The gesture, combined with his devilish smirk and narrowed eyes, made him look quite evil, indeed. "Because, you know, the only thing I like more than the taste of Neku is the taste of Joshua..."

1 gulped hard and nodded. "No, there will be no need for that...I understand. I won't let you down, sir..."

"Hmph. I hope so."

* * *

A few minutes later, Neku was working on a particularly sticky mouthful, while Joshes 2-5 massaged his back and shoulders and #1 and #6 worked on his toes. Josh #6 was whispering furiously at Josh #1, who was blushing hard and kept saying "No! No, I would never!" The others were babbling about competely irrelevant and kinda girly things, like horoscopes and aroma therapy, but Neku could barely hear them. They had somehow lulled him into that dreamlike state again, but he didn't mind so much. As long as they didn't try any funny business, Neku was too relaxed to do anything. Neku hated to admit it, but Joshua was apparently a natural-born masseuse.

"You have a lot of tension in your shoulders," Josh #3 remarked as he worked his fingers in warm, tight circles. A pleasant sort of humming vibrated through Neku's skin wherever the Joshes touched, although it was hard to notice over the cheesecake. He was halfway through, and close to crying, because Neku didn't want it to end, because it was the greatest substance on the planet.

"Nrrt rrnymrrr," Neku said around a doughy mouthful of chocolaty goodness. Of course, in Muffled, this meant "Not anymore," because Joshua was good at getting the stress knots to snap undone.

They were suddenly interrupted by a ferocious banging noise. From the sound of it, it seemed like it came from behind the...closet...door...

"PARTY'S OVER," said a muffled voice.

Neku gulped the rest of his cake down suddenly.

"Uh, guys... It's been real, but..." He hopped out of bed and shoved the Joshes out the door, which he then shut and latched as quietly as he could. Shibuya saw four bewildered-looking Joshes standing on the landing that morning, accompanied by an uncomfortable-looking one and another who was quite smug.

Neku wiped his face off hurriedly with a towel – hiding the evidence - and ran over to the closet. He unlocked the door and opened it to see Joshua, our Joshua, sprawled out on the vacuum cleaner and looking annoyed. "ACHOOOO!" And also sick.

"I thought you were scared of the closet," Neku mumbled sheepishly.

"They picked me up and threw me in here," Joshua snapped. "Help me up, I'm all sore..."

"They threw you in?" Neku asked as he lifted Joshua to his feet. Then, he winced, as he realized his hands were still covered with incriminating chocolaty what-have-you. Josh noticed but said nothing, the curl of his lip and the_"...really?"_look speaking for him.

Joshua was indeed very sore, and he nearly crumpled over and had to grab Neku for support. He was shivering, even though it was warm (Neku had left the window open) and there were bruise-like bags under his eyes. They really brought out the color of his irises, in Neku's opinion. He also had a nose that was dripping like a leaky faucet, and was starting to become red and puffy where he kept wiping at it. "Yes, they _threw me in_. They _lifted me up_ and _tossed me inside_. And they _locked the door_." Joshua paused to sniffle weakly. "Urgh..."

"You don't look so good," Neku commented, edging away. Whatever he had, Neku wanted none of it.

"Yes, well, I don't feel so good. I think I'm getting a cold." Joshua sneezed, to illustrate. "But anyway. When they threw me in the closet, I discovered something."

He motioned for Neku to come peek in the closet, which he did. Josh then poked his finger at the corner of the ceiling. Neku's innards kind of contracted, because there was the Thing, in all of its spidery, eight-legged, unholy glory, leering at them with its too-shiny eyes. "Hey," Neku whined. "Not fair, I thought we killed it!"

"We did. It's a new one." Joshua folded his arms. "While I was locked in, I saw a panel slide open, and then _this_ Thing came out."

Neku walked over to the middle of the floor and examined the carpet. "Um, Josh? Where'd the corpse go?"

"Oh, your harem probably cleaned it up, I expect," Joshua said in a good-natured fashion, but the pure disgust coiled around his soul was evident, like a blood-covered knife tossed under a chiffon curtain. "Before they, you know, woke you up."

"Why would they do that?" Joshua didn't seem the type to go out of the way and do extra work just for the nicety of it all, even if it was a gay Joshua after his soul.

"They _like _you, Neku. Let's face it - you're just _Mr. Popular_ around these parts,"Joshua spat, rubbing his back and scowling. "Ouchie..."

"Yeah, well," Neku said. "Joshua is supposed to be a lazy jerk, not a french maid...I think we're missing something."

Joshua flicked his hair back. "Hrm. Ve-ry suspicious. But let's not dwell on things unworthy of our neural synapses. Now," he said, clapping his hands. "I propose we spend this day gathering information about our surroundings. You'll need to put your listening ears on, because we are going to talk to as many people as we can and find out what's what. We'll also need to get some equipment, for which to catalog our finds. It'll be much easier to get around if we have a rulebook."

"A rulebook?" Neku screwed his face up. "Where do they sell those?"

"We'll_ make _one," Joshua said tiredly, giving Neku a look and wiping his nose. "Based on our observations and logical thinking. Shouldn't be too hard, since after all, I'm brilliant – and _yes, _Neku, you are quite shiny yourself - don't go all inferiority complex on me now... We should probably get moving; I want to have a plan ready to go by tomorrow. If we work quickly, we should be out of here in three days, at most."

Neku nodded. "Okay. Three days. Sounds good."

Joshua then took a moment to hack up half a lung. "Assuming my body doesn't fall apart before then," he moaned.

* * *

They got ready and stuff. The author would like to avoid describing every action they took that morning in florid detail, such as: the way Joshua divided his mouth into quadrants and brushed each one for one whole minute; the way Neku couldn't help but burst into song the moment shower water touched his skin and the way he turned redder than a steamed lobster when Joshua joined in; the way they had a brief but violent wrestling match to decide who would be carrying the stuff; the way Neku insisted that Joshua brush his hair - his head was looking like an angry storm cloud and it almost earned him the nickname "Thunderhead," but that seemed a bit too awesome for The Petite Prince; the way Joshua had grudgingly agreed and then stumbled out of the bathroom looking like a girl; the way Neku had clucked his tongue disapprovingly, ("Hello, pot? This is the kettle," said Joshua) and then shown him how to do it right; the way Joshua eventually wound up tying it into a ponytail because he was looking girlier by the minute and Neku had called him out on using a scrunchie and Joshua had defied him to find anything better in the crappy little motel room and Neku had suggested tying the Thing into a knot which had led into several tense moments as they pondered the possibilities.

Eventually, they scrambled down the stairs, both looking rather haggard. Joshua had his hair tied back, and Neku had his unspiked and loose and free like an eagle dunked in orange paint. They were squabbling over who lost the wrestling match and therefore had to carry the equipment.

"YOU lost," Neku insisted stubbornly. "I had you pinned for like, ten minutes."

"That's because I was lacing my shoe."

"Bullshit!" Neku declared.

"I called time! It doesn't count," Joshua said, doing that thing where he flipped his hair and tried to be all condescending, but the trained eye could see that he was stewing inside. (Evidence of stewing: he had to toss his ponytail, and it just _happened _to hit Neku in the face.)

Neku's eyes had extensive training, and were currently hosting summer camps dedicated to the subject. And then there was the whole hair-hit-him-in-the-face thing. "Oh, come on. Does too!" He poked Joshua between the shoulder blades, a little known tickle spot that had revealed itself in their scuffle.

Pretty-boy jolted with a stifled EEK. "Don't you start with me, Neku Sakuraba," Joshua warned, sniffling. He glanced over at that creepy Recepshua guy, who was slumped over his desk and looking dead on his feet. Joshua recovered from the violation of his tickly spot and put his smirk on, seeing an opportunity to bother someone lying bare before him, naked and shivering with goosebumps. "Well, well! Slacking on the job, are we?" He elbowed Neku in the ribs and nodded in Recepshua's direction.

"Ha! Wait. Is he sleeping?" Oh, Neku. You're so dumb.

"I'm not asleeeeeeeep," came an awful autotone wail that seemed to emanate from the receptionist's head. Or his hair, it was hard to tell. They were practically separate entities, after all. "I'm RESTINGggggg."

Joshua was appalled. How do you drag out a consonant? And yet, this guy had managed it... But true to form, he didn't let his confusion show. "Tsk, tsk! What's it going to take to get some kiai around here?"

"Wryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy," Neku said under his breath, pretending to flatten something with an invisible yellow steamroller. Joshua sighed.

"I meant the corporate kind, dingbat."

As they walked past the front desk, Recepshua stiffened. His pupils kind of dilated and his head twisted around all creepy-like, complete with a rusty squeal, like that of the iron-wrought gate that surrounds the creepy house on the hill, the house full of rumors and a crotchety old couple known to eat little boys by cracking their heads on a satanic altar and sucking out the jelly. Traces of foam were visible around the corners of his pretty mouth, his eyes unblinking and huge, not unlike the big, wet, sunken ones of a hideous deep-sea fish. He was starting to give off a horrid, humid smell of decay and electricity. He looked...unwell. "NEKU," he said, quite suddenly. "NEKU, DEAR, COME TO ME."

"Uh..." Neku froze and stared at the twitching carcass that was moaning his name.

"Ignore him," Joshua said breezily, and plowed ahead to the cafeteria. He smelled brisket sandwiches, and Viper Drink, and a high concentration of salt. Far more important than..._eurgh, no, don't look, Joshua...don't look... _He squeezed his eyes shut and refused to look at the thing, knowing if he did, he'd probably puke on it, and heaven knows that would go over FANTASTICALLY.

Recepshua's nails began scrabbling at the top of the desk, carving deep trenches in the wood. For the first time, Neku realized his nails were filed to absurdly sharp points...almost like cat claws...or worse. Joshua couldn't see them, but he could hear them, making awful scritch-scratch noises like the sound of teeth on bone. "COME TO ME NEKU, LET ME TOUCH YOU..."

"Uh..." Neku had no idea what to do. The Joshua on the desk was freaking him out, to be honest.

"Ignore him," was Joshua's advice. _Don't look at it, don't look at it, don't LOOK at it...I am the master of my eyes, I choose what I see and do not see...nrrk...nnyyaaaAAAUUUGHHHH! FIGHT DA POWAH!_

"PLEEEEASEeeeEE... I NEED THIS...iM gOIng To BE erASEd..."

"Uh..."

Joshua finally decided to take action - he clomped over to behind the paralyzed Neku, seized him firmly by the shoulders, and wheeled him into the cafeteria. Eyes still firmly shut, of course. Joshua had a burning fighting spirit inside him today, although that could have been the fever. Recepshua remained limply draped over his desk, moaning pitifully, scritch-scratching away with his sharp, sharp nails. Joshua pretended he wasn't sickened, nor scared beyond belief, and steered Neku over to the bar. He grabbed a tray from the trolley, businesslike, and spooned up salty stuff he would pretend to have an appetite for.

They both ignored the fact that every other Joshua in the cafeteria had sharp nails.

They both ignored the fact that every other Joshua was looking at Neku with something like hunger.

* * *

After they had ingested their morning calories in the form of a stack of french toast and a pile of salt with a side of brisket sandwich, Neku and Joshua went outside to talk strategy.

"I vote we go and buy a notebook," Neku said.

Joshua nodded. "Reasonable. So, who sells notebooks in Shibuya?"

"Hm...maybe Kariya or Uzuki would let us borrow theirs...?"

"Very funny."

"Let's try 104. Maybe some kid forgot their diary."

Hey, it could happen. So Joshua and Neku went to 104, being very careful to hook arms (they were far too macho to hold hands, unlike the rest of the population, which skipped everywhere, toting frilly parasols and giggling like schoolgirls) and walk at a deliberate, Invader Zim-esque march so that they wouldn't get lost in an ocean of themselves. It was a fairly sunny morning, with a few smoggy clouds draped leisurely over the watery topaz sky, and the blooms on the rose-vines were open wide, giving off waves of their sweet, sweet aroma. Neku found himself liking the rose-vine smell more every day. To the gangly boy, it smelled of soft things and spring and smiles and lullabies. It was quite relaxing. Maybe it was his imagination, but there seemed to be bloom lighting in effect – the way the sunshine touched everything was very perfect and made everything look picturesque and beautiful and kind of...golden. All was set aglow with a sort of surreal beauty that just wasn't natural.

This lighting was doing wonders for Joshua. Even though he was sniffling and had dark rings under his eyes and a spotty sort of redness in the middle of his cheeks, he still looked like grade-A photo material. Like, something you wanted to paint a picture of and hang in a gallery somewhere. Neku thought a few more things of increasing awkwardness, and then quickly derailed that train of thought by wondering about the weather. Even in his slightly dizzy state, Neku was still somewhat practical. Enough to know that wanting to carve a statue of some sick dude he was supposed to be mad at was an indication that he was not in his right mind.

"Nice day, huh?" he said stupidly, trying to make idle conversation while stomping along like a wind-up toy soldier. He was also trying to distract himself from admittedly bizzarre thoughts about _Toga!_Joshua hacking up a glob of smarmy jerkass bacteria all over _Sculptor!_Neku's leg.

"Yeah," replied Joshua, with equal stupidity. Although, in his case, it was quite excusable. His face felt like it had been packed with cotton sometime during the night. Even his _thoughts_ felt stuffed up. He was trying to have as few of those as possible, to conserve energy for when he really had to think. As a result, his mind was blank of all the wit and charm that usually manned the controls, leaving only a mechanical, dull sense of awareness. "Nice."

Neku and Joshua plodded along in stiff silence for a while.

The awkwardness on Neku's end was such that Neku found himself looking everywhere but his companion. This allowed him to notice that there were a lot of what looked like giant, fleshy, green tentacles busting through the concrete and laying limply in the middle of the street. There was one that had bust through the wall of what looked like another motel (lots of motels, too), and a Joshua was standing next to it, watering it with a hose and reciting Shakespearean love sonnets. How odd.

Joshua was too focused on suppressing the sickness to care.

There wasn't much time for chatting, anyway - they reached 104 in two minutes (they were walking slow), which Joshua was disgusted to find choked with the strangling tendrils of rose-vines and their nauseating stench. Joshua shook his head darkly, and would have complained, if he hadn't been feeling a bit clogged in the brain. _It's just because it's morning_, he told himself. _When have you ever been good in the morning?_

Neku banished all thoughts of Joshua and him playing Tin Pin on a marble block while eating cheesecake and looked around 104. The doors had been a little difficult to open, what with all the rose-vines everywhere. Neku was kind of surprised to see that the vines had followed them in – in fact, it seemed like the vines all stemmed from this one point. What had once been a shopping supercenter was now a...well, it was hard to describe. The vines had crawled in from below and exploded in growth, it looked like - overtaking the tile, the escalators, the windows of the stores, the little seating areas...and from the looks of several strangely-shaped lumps in the vegetation, a few people as well.

The plant growth had gotten to the point where, instead of a mall, Neku felt like he was standing in some gigantic, quivering womb; the spongy, muscular walls were knotted with ropy, bulging veins and arteries, with a thick of slippery green meat that quivered and pulsed beneath it all. The emerald lush went up as high as the eye could see, and perhaps even farther, because there seemed to be a hole in the roof, through which a waterfall of the strange golden light spilled. Neku could see there were a few tendrils of the outer rose-vines poking in through the ceiling, shedding their coral petals and a whisper of their aroma. The whole chamber was full of a fleshy, earthy smell, a cross between raw meat and decaying plant matter.

Joshua felt like he had walked right into a giant green stomach, and was expecting the walls to contract and ooze hydrochloric acid all over him and his nice shoes. He didn't like it. And from the looks of things, the rose-vines had been eating well...he glanced at one of the humanoid forms trapped in the fleshy embrace of green tendrils, and shuddered. Being crushed and dissolved by acid while still conscious wasn't exactly his fetish.

Neku had gotten over the initial wonder and was getting down to business. He walked into the center of the chamber and started poking around like he owned the place, looking for notebooks. Joshua was adverse to the idea of going anywhere but out of here – the bad feeling in his gut felt heavier than ever, and the smell was making him feel sicker than sick – but then he saw something, something small and pink, embedded in the wall. Joshua hurried over to it, hoping it was what he hoped it was. It had better be, because he tripped about six times on his way over to the stupid thing. Nice shoes, when they are two sizes too big for your little feet, do not take well to spongy floors covered in fleshy green tubes the size of plumbing pipes.

Joshua was almost to the little thing of interest when he was tripped by a particularly large phloem. He came tumbling down until he bashed his face into the sweet-smelling flesh of the wall. It was slimy and moist and started to suck him in. Revolted, Josh pulled his head out of of the squishy, contracting plant muscles and looked up, seeing that he had fallen into some sort of pit. A wet, slobbery pit. "Eurgh," he muttered, glancing at the sticky nectar oozing from the walls and wondering if it was going to digest him...or worse. Whatever it was, it was bothering his sickness – his headache beat fists on the back of his skull, threatening to burst through. It throbbed horribly on the back of his eyeballs until it hurt to blink and the fuzzy, tired ache in his arms became more like rigor mortis. On the plus side, there was the something...just a few meters out of his reach. _Naturally_, he thought with a groan. _I, the sick, weak child with noodles for arms, have to climb the wall of the strange plant organ by balancing on fleshy ropes that are slowly oozing pale slime that may or may not be acid. Oh, please, get me out of here._

He did it anyway, partially because he was going to be able to show Neku up again. _He_ certainly wasn't climbing the walls – in fact, he was probably messing with the plant-entombed corpses. The poor boy. Joshua managed a miserable thought of red pickup trucks and started to climb. The creepers were damp and spongy, and they curled around his fingers, but they were thick enough and the wall was sloped in such a way that it was a fairly easy climb. Joshua was still worried about the acid, thinking it was like saliva or something like that; a weak acid that took effect over time. _Wouldn't that be dandy_, he thought to himself, grimacing at the mental images of shiny-raw blisters all over his hands as his skin peeled off and flaked away. Anyway, he finally reached the something.

Only now that he was close to it could he identify what the something was. It seemed to be the pearl-pink corner of some sort of object – he squinted, sniffled, ignored the throbbing headache - either a book or a journal, and hopefully the latter. It was firmly buried in the pulsating, vein-like tendrils, though. Joshua's arms felt like they were rubber gloves filled with the plant slime, though, so he wondered how he was going to get it out.

Aha, of course. These were plants, right? They were alive, and from the way they were curling around his pants leg they seemed to have a fondness for warmth. Probably how the wretched thing ate, anyway – pulling its victims under the surface, smothering them against the fleshy meat and suffocating them with digestive slime. Whatever the case, nobody was shopping here anymore. Anyway, he had a bit of an idea. A stupid idea born in a feverish brain, but an idea nonetheless.

Joshua started to tickle the plant.

_Very stupid_, he thought with a vague, sickly smile, even while he was skittering slippery fingers over the tendrils that held the pink object. He was kind of surprised when they started to shudder and curl up into strange, twisty shapes, waving around like streamers. Almost as if they were laughing. Joshua tried to giggle at the idea, but halfway through his windpipe it decided it wanted to be a painful cough instead. The plants jerked away from the coughing, dropping the pink book with a wet sucking noise. Joshua wondered about that vaguely for a few seconds, then decided to not poke a trick horse in the gut (or whatever the Adaginator said) and picked up the pink book. He started back down the slope, but he slipped on the mucousy slime, and found himself hitting the ground with a wet slap.

It didn't hurt that much, but that was trivial. HE WAS COVERED IN SLIIIME. His nice shoes...oh, _**no**_...Joshua stifled a sickly groan of despair. _Despair...the womb-lining has left me in despair_...WAIT. How was he going to get out now?

How else? Make the proxy do it, of course. "Negh-ku!" he called, but it came out sounding like he was doing a cruel impression of an elephant seal, so he cleared his throat and tried again. "Neku! Neku, be a pal and come help me out..."

Neku's head popped over the edge of the pit. "Hunh? Josh?" He squinted and pursed his lips in a face of deepest confusion. "...How'dja get down there?"

Joshua waved a hand around vaguely and clutched the book to his chest.

Neku nodded thoughtfully. "Ah, I see...er, wait, how am I gonna get you out?"

Joshua sneezed in reply.

Neku's eyebrows knit. "...Why don'tcha just use the ladder?"

Joshua glanced over to the corner, and lo and behold, there stood the famed Convenient Ladder of legend. It looked like some idiot had left their ladder here, and the plant had tried to eat it, because the ladder was so covered in tendrils and vines and such that it looked like it had grown out of the plant wall. But that was not the case, because that would be _too_ convenient. It was a little suspicious as it was, because, I mean, _really_ – who leaves their ladder lying around?

However, Yoshiya Kiryu was not one to question the rare times good luck was sent his way, so he just climbed up the ladder and didn't say a word.

"Heeeeey," said Neku, grinning. "You got a book, too?" He waved his find around – a slick, black number with cool swirly blue designs and a silver dragon head snarling in the corner. "One a' them skeletons was clutching this like it was his dearest possession, so y'know, I just _had_ to take it!"

"Yeah," Joshua sniffled, looking at the book in his arms quietly. Josh's book was ratty and pink, and he had gotten it by tickling, not ripping it out of the embrace of a skeleton. ...Tickling. He scowled.

Neku looked at him with something like pity. "Well...we can use your book. I want to keep this one, myself...hehe..."

Joshua glared at him. He hated being pitied, even more than he hated deserving it.

...But...maybe...did this mean he was finally making headway on this friendship thing? A little firefly of hope flitted around in his right atrium for a second before his cardiac muscles contracted and sent the firefly away in a torrent of plasma and hemoglobin.

"...Whatever," Joshua said after a moment. "Let's just get out of here..."

And so they did.

* * *

"_Morning rays, hairspray queens/Get on their way to the nest, the west/Honestly, I once had a dream/Belles of society, in the shells of their unity/Cor'net n' spinet/The sound flows, follows 'till they're home/Dragged by the power of the dream/Their power is yet unknow-oh-onnnnn_," Neku sang, tapping his pencil rhythmically on his dragon notebook.

The two were sitting behind some trash cans and a pile of crates. Joshua had nestled between a discarded coil of rope and the crate pile; Neku had just kicked a few pieces of colorful trash out of the way and slouched back against the wall. They now were filling out Joshua's pink book with all the "rules" of the J/Niverse, as Joshua had decided to call it. (Neku had wanted to call it Dysfunction Junction, but Josh had argued that the clones technically weren't dysfunctional, at least not by the plane's standards. Really, he was just jealous that he didn't come up with that name.) The pink book turned out to be a journal, thankfully – there were a few pages of writing, but it was all in backwards Italian, like da Vinci's grocery lists. Joshua had to skip a few pages to begin their records.

"Okay, so let's see what we have so far," Joshua said after finishing the final curly thing on a kanji that looked kind of like a hairball but meant "carburetor." He glanced up at Neku, who was still singing and now had a little dance to go along with it. "...Take those headphones off, Nekky. This is important, full-attention, good-listener-worthy material."

Neku sighed dismally. "Unh...whatever, dude..." He tugged the 'phones down and settled into his listening position, even though he had supplied half the list.

Joshua puffed up a little and straightened his back importantly. He got into serious exposition mode and started rattling off the rules.

"Rule number one – this Shibuya is populated by millions of Nekus and Joshuas. There are more Joshuas than Nekus. Joshuas seem to be social animals; they form packs of two to six, and these packs tend to congregate in loose colonies, located in motels. They also seem to hate all Joshuas outside of their groups. Nekus, on the other hand, are uncommon and seem to be highly sought after. They seem to travel solo or in pairs, or alternatively surrounded by Joshuas. Packs of Joshuas will compete over the rights to a single Neku. Once a Neku has been 'claimed,' and I shudder to think what that means, no other Joshuas are allowed to have anything to do with them. It seems to be an honor system, however.

"Rule number two – at night, Joshuas will initiate the 'night cycle,' a period of time between 9:00 PM and 7:00 AM where they are unconscious, except when they are 'active.' Definition of 'active' is still unknown. Similar rules do not apply to Nekus, which seem to stay awake all night.

"Rule number three – a Joshua who has claimed a Neku seems to be able to hand over the rights to a fellow Joshua, or alternatively, split them fifty-fifty. Joshuas seem to be desperate for Nekus, and will ask to take him off your hands. I'd gladly let them, but Mr. H would have my head mounted. Ahem. A Joshua who has not 'had' a Neku in a while seems to completely lose it. Recepshua said something about being erased? Remember to look into this, partner...huh? Brokeback Mountain? What's that? ...No, I haven't seen it, don't do the whole 'western' thing...why? ...Huh? Well, why'd you bring it up, then? Sheesh, Neku, you're so silly...

"Rule number four – Joshuas will try to seduce Nekus with cheesecake. Yes, Neku, I have no doubt that it is 'bitchin,' but no, I don't think I want to try it, thank you.

"Rule number five – Joshuas will be nice to Nekus whenever possible. This means breaking character and cleaning the floors like a friggin' _maid _service. They will also be mean to other Joshuas whenever they can. This may be a source of the pack instinct – because belonging to a pack of Joshuas seems to be safer than being a lone Josh all by himself. Great.

"Rule number six – Nekus seem to lack spines and will blindly fall into Joshuas's clutches. See rule number four.

"Rule number seven – this Shibuya is covered in rose-vines. These plants give off a nauseatingly sugary odor that seems to bother nobody but me, proving that I'm the only self-respecting Joshua for miles. My associate seems to like it, strangely enough. He says it smells relaxing. May be the same for all Nekus...?

"Rule number eight – aforementioned rose-vines seem to be carnivorous. They seem to originate around 104, which has evidence of people being eaten. There are bones on the floor, and humanoid forms trapped under the vines.

"Rule number nine – ano se, kawaii desu ne gomenesai Shinigami-sama hyuk hyuk onara shinken Neku-baka no carburetor."

"And that's all we've got so far," Joshua finally said, tapping his chin with his pen.

"What the hell was that last one about? Neku-baka no _carburetor?_"

Joshua shrugged. "Gratuitous Japanese. For the ambiance."

"...The HELL? We're IN Japan, we don't need ambiance!"

"KAWAIIIiiIIIIIIIiiII desu NEEEHHHHHhhhhhh~ ," Joshua screeched in his horrible voice, making a point to enunciate the tilde and quarter note.

Neku shook his head, snickering. "Dude, you sound just like one of those goofy foreigners that think their puny brains can grasp our grammar."

"Nani?"

"Okay, shut up now. ...Or I'll bonk you."

"Hai, Nekkun."

He was bonked.

"...Ow...that was juvenile, Neku...ahem! Okay, so now that we have the rules recorded and such, we can move on to things we need to find out." Joshua nodded, rubbing his head. He wiped his nose fretfully, because he had been ignoring it and only just now noticed that it was dripping in the notebook.

"Go ahead," Neku said. "We're burning daylight, y'know."

"Right, well...so, we need to find out what exactly being 'active' means, and how one would 'activate' a Joshua...we need to figure out why the Joshes want the Nekus, and what they plan to do with them, for your safety (as well as mine)...we also need to find out what happens to the Joshes if they don't get a Neku, and I'd like to know where they're coming from. What is a 'reversible,' exactly, and what are the other types? Finally, I'd like to know why no females are around here, and exactly what happened to 104. That is all, really."

"Why do we need to know that?" Neku complained, clearly not looking forward to an afternoon of wrestling information out of a bunch of Joshuas.

"Why not? Knowledge is powder," Joshua said sagely. Immediately he realized he had just barfed out a Beatism, so he tried to amend as classily as he could: "Or, should I say..._power?_"

Neku looked at him, faintly amused. "Uh...whatever you say, dude..."

"Shut up, I'm sick."

"So, uh," Neku said, his eyes getting all shifty and stuff. "How exactly are we gonna get all that out of...well, you know how you are."

Joshua glared at him. It wasn't very effective, because when Joshua glares he purses his lips and crosses his arms, a stance that calls to mind an image of your mother looking at your muddy footprints on her newly-waxed floor. Except minus the impending spanking, which takes all the terror out of it. "Hmph! We ask them, obviously!"

Neku's eyebrow was raised. "And when they avoid the question just to watch you squirm?"

"...Ugh...I don't know, okay?" Joshua twirled the strand of rope betwixt his fingers, thinking. And then he realized what he was doing, and the good ol' smirk crept back onto his features, twisting them up in a familiar devious grin. _Never a good sign, _thought Neku, and prepared to sail his mental ship through the ocean of bad ideas during a hurricane of crazy.

Joshua looked up at Neku with a downright evil glimmer in his violet eyes. "I don't know...but I have an idea."

* * *

A/N: I watched a show about black holes today. 'Course, I already knew half the stuff in the documentary, because y'know, they just regurgitate the same stuff over and over and pretend it's new. I also did a report on black holes in fifth grade for my creative whatever class. It was quite interesting material, though I couldn't even read the wikipidea entry and that's always a bad sign. Thankfully, I found one site that bothered to put it in layman's terms, for the blue-collar schmoes like me. I like the whole idea of a singularity – a point that is nothing wide, nothing tall, and yet contains more mass than thirty million suns. It's cool how they flip the bird to the laws of physics and rip open bottomless pits in the fabric of the space-time continuum. And how to become a black hole – you have to be a big ol' Red Giant, which is like the mafia boss of the stars, and then you have to EXPLODE and then UNEXPLODE and kind of invert reality a bit, nothing too fancy, and then wham! Black hole, baby!

Although setting a song about supermassive black holes to a show about vampires playing baseball sounds epic in theory, it's not. Good thing I never watched that movie, hyuk hyuk!

I think, if the TWEWY cast were celestial bodies...Neku would be a blue star, Joshua would be a PURPLE star, Sho would be a star at mathematics, and Beat would be a black hole, devouring all matter that crosses a set distance. Rhyme would be a sea star. Joshuastar would then become a shooting star, and Nekustar would be a falling star, and then he would EXPLODE and Joshuastar would be knocked out of the galaxy and into Beatstar's never-ending mouth. Rhymestar would not know or care about the existence of other stars, being that sea stars lack a brain. Homestar would not care either, being that Homestars also lack a brain. Nekustar, after exploding, would be reincarnated as an orange cat, and he would then gather a clan of noble Warriors, and they would name it KickassClan and proceed to own the fuzzy kittypet asses of all other Clans. And then Joshuastar would descend from the heavens, all MIRACULOUSLY UNHURT, and he'd be all "im in ur psicologee, rappin ur miend." And Nekustar would be all, "aw, racdrops" or something. One of those stupid cat cusswords.

My little brother is trying to play TWEWY. "Hey! Kip! I just got a 'C' rank!1!11!" *sighs fondly* Ah, youth. (Of course, _I_ always get star ranks. And without auto-play! Good god, I HATE the auto-play. The AI is a total crapshoot. ...Although Joshua bonks his head a lot less...but that's what makes it funny~)


	7. In which Information is Wrestled Out Of

_**JOSHUA TRIPS**_

CHAPTER SEVEN: IN WHICH NEKU AND JOSHUA ATTEMPT TO LITERALLY WRESTLE INFORMATION OUT OF A SMARMY JACKASS

Summary: So Neku and Joshua have begun the information-gathering process. However, there's still a few things they'd like to find out. Will questioning the masses reveal new mysteries? Or will it be completely pointless, since basically everyone is...well, Joshua?

Rating: T for icky icky eww stuff and also badness

OF NOTE IN THIS CHAPTER: Nobody reads this, do they?

Genre: Parody/Adventure

If it matters to anyone, I got Yume Nikki recently! BOOYAKA

* * *

Joshua N999-9025 was not really in a hurry. He was scheduled to meet with M200-2008 and M217-2006, the other members of his pack, and discuss their targets. It was something he wasn't really looking forward to. He just knew M200 would be all bossy again, just because HE was the oldest and had the highest score of the three of them. And M217 would be late and they'd have to wait an hour. Plus, N99 was running low and his joints were starting to chafe painfully when he ran. He wondered if this was a by-product of the Ns having all those improvements on the skeletal structure, or if the Ms had the same problem.

Those two Ms were the real reason N99 was walking slowly, though. They always bitched at him because of his squeaky ankles and mocked his slightly watery-lavender eyes, the color brought on by experimental cutting-edge lenses that had turned out to be a flop. They could just eat metal, for all N99 cared; they were the reason his joints were squeaky anyway. The M models had a glitch in their BMI indexers, so they always rushed in before the Neku was ready and then he would ALWAYS escape. N99 hadn't been full ever since he joined their sorry little pack. He wondered how on earth the two of them had gotten such high scores - probably from freeloading off more competent units until they got kicked out. Hee, hee.

N99 shuffled along, watching the clouds. Maybe if he didn't show up, they'd think he'd been erased, and terminate their pact? He probably would stand a better chance on his own than with those two nincompoops. Smirking at a smoggy cirrus lying still in the golden sky, N99 imagined their smug faces going all frantic with panic when they realized the only rational packmate was out of the equation. They'd probably wither away, trying to subsist on Special Shio Ramen until they finally collapsed into twitching heaps of snot. Meanwhile, N99 would be sinking his teeth into one delectable Neku after another – they'd be leaping into his arms, practically! Hee hee hee hee-

-the train of thought was derailed as four hands shot out of the shadows of a nearby alley and pulled him into the darkness.

There was a lot of blurry movement and a scuffle of arms and legs. Before N99 knew what was happening, some twit had him bent rather artistically into a wrestling hold while another was busy tightening the blindfold. "Neeehhh! Unhand me, you nitwits!"

"Not until you answer our questions," grunted the blindfold-tightener, and suddenly the wet cloth tied over his eyes didn't matter - from the delicious smell alone, N99 immediately knew him to be a Neku. But there was something definitely exotic about this Neku's scent...exquisite! As the aroma wafted past, N99 almost started drooling – imagine that. As it was, he started feeling giddy and very, very hungry.

"Oh, come on...nitwits?" came a faintly amused voice from in front of his face – the owner of the arms that had him pinned. That was unmistakably a Joshua, but - how on earth - wrestling? N99 knew there were a few of Supermask's wrestling tapes in the video store, but they were crumbling...and archaic...and so old - and nobody had VHS players anymore, they just weren't trendy...but - _wrestling? _N99's captor sighed tiredly. "Just our luck – out of a billion Joshes, we bag the village idiot."

Okay, that was just uncalled for. "I am not the village idiot!" N99 fumed. "I'm an N model!"

"Define N model," said the Joshua, as if he didn't know what an N model was. "It sounds quite savvy."

"You bet your boots! N models have full memory updates and patches on all BMI indexers, and even a better skeletal system – massive improvements off the M model! We are built strong to last long!"

There followed a lapse of silence. "What exactly...are you, then?" the Neku said slowly.

"I'm an N model, Ne~kun," N99 sighed dreamily. Suddenly, he yelped as a fist connected with the top of his head. Bonk! "Gya-HUH, what was that?"

"Divine punishment," snapped the Joshua. "Now you listen to me, you little twerp - "

"I don't listen to any Joshuas!" N99 snarled. "What's your model, anyway?"

"YJK, bitch."

"Ahem," the Neku said. "Josh, move your fatness." The Joshua unit slid off of N99's chest and onto his lap, grumbling.

"I am_ not fat_, I am _completely healthy_."

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever sates your fragile ego, my leige..." The Neku's voice migrated around to behind N99 and propped him up. N99 was aware of some kind of weight snaking around his wrists, fingers poking and brushing against his back... About then, he realized he was being tied up. He tried to struggle, but it was too late. "...Ha! You're not goin' anywhere." The Neku's voice had moved again, so that it was in front of him. Very confusing.

N99 suddenly had a thought. Oh, NO. "Please don't kill me," he whimpered, breaking out the puppy-dog eyes. Of course, the majority of the effect was lost on his captors, since he was wearing a blindfold. "Please! My score is so low...I'm barely four months old, please...I'm not worth it! I'm not-"

"We aren't going to KILL you, dingbat!" the Joshua snapped, kicking him in the ribs. N99 cried out at the sudden impact to his global positioning system. So did the Joshua, but it had more to do with the titanium alloy than anything. "Holy sh—what kind of...? ...ouch...OUCH..." There was the irregular sound of crunching dirt and a low snickering coming from the delicious Neku, which seemed to imply that the Joshua was hopping around on one foot, cursing.

"Well...since he's not going to be doing anything useful for a while, I'll question you instead." Mm, even his voice sounded yummy...

"Sure thing, Ne~kun," said N99. And then: "Um...Ne~kun?"

"Whut?"

N99 grinned as sheepishly as he could. "Could you take off the blindfold? I mean, I have no idea where I am...it's really quite pointless..."

From the pause in audio feedback, the Neku seemed to consider this for a moment. "Whatever. But no funny stuff. And no lying, or my partner will fix you up bad." He reached over, and with a rustling of fabric untied the blindfold, which just happened to be the Joshua's slimy shirt. N99 blinked and discovered he was in an alleyway – well, duh, but WHICH alleyway? - and the Neku was sitting on a crate across from him. The Joshua had settled down and was rubbing his toe furiously.

The two of them certainly made an odd pair. N99 tipped his head to the side and studied them for a second. The Neku had his hair down and his headphones off, and there was none of the usual hair gel smell. The Joshua, on the other hand, had hair about an inch longer than standards condoned (_Probably defective_, N99 thought) tied back in a ponytail. From the way he kept shivering and sniffling, it looked like he had a cold or something. His shirt was slimy enough - he was wringing it out and muttering crossly - but the rest of him was also thinly coated with the same mucous-y stuff. (_Definitely__ defective_, N99 thought) His face and torso were absolutely _covered_ with faint bruises. Come to think of it, the Neku had a rather nasty blotch on his cheek, too.

N99 tensed. Ruffians! Vagabonds! Renegades! Ragamuffins! These two were obviously defective. Why else would they form a pact? It looked like they both had received damage – perhaps enough to wipe their memories? Maybe – maybe they were just looking for the lost data, so...they probably weren't in their right minds. Not defective, per se, but...damaged. He was suddenly struck with a deep feeling of pity, (which never happens to any Joshua worth his salt ramen) and suddenly wanted to reach out to these hurt Souls and comfort them. So N99's pitying side decided he would tell them everything they wanted to know, and then his shrewd side hoped they didn't activate randomly and try to erase him.

"So...um...hello there. I'm Joshua N999-9025. But if you want, I suppose you can call me N99, because that's what my friends call me...I'm a submissive unit, and I have a score of 4. Not very high, I've gotta say." He laughed awkwardly. "What are your ID's?"

The Neku and the Joshua glanced at each other, and N99 could practically see the data streaming through their intense glare. "...Er..."

"Do you remember?" N99 asked. "...Were your memories wiped? Because it looks like you've taken some damage to your-"

"EXACTLY!" they both said at once, leaping on the excuse. N99 was a bit frazzled.

"But you can call me Neku, I guess," said the Neku after a minute. He gave his companion a little punch in the arm. "And he's Joshua."

"...Yeah..." said Joshua, rubbing his arm and grumbling something nasty about the imaginary fall from Eden or some such nonsense.

N99 smiled brightly. He had to be careful, stay on their good side; these two were pacted tightly for certain, and were thus on good terms with each other, but they were still displaying signs of aggression. Have to be careful. "Oh, okay. So. What do you need to know?"

"First off," the Neku said before the Joshua could cut in with a whole list. "Tell us why there are so many of us."

"Joshes and Nekus? ...For the Game, sillies!" He tried not to laugh but...("Hee, hee!")...it was just so absurd!

The Joshua narrowed his eyes at the shrill giggle. "The...Game, huh?"

"Yup," said N99.

"Could you explain the rules?" the Joshua asked.

N99 bit back a snide (and pretty flimsy) comment about how the tables had turned and reminded himself to play it safe. "Of course! The Goal of the Game is...well, when you score 99 points, you're free – they take you to the White Building and then...well, that's it, really."

"And how would we get these so-called 'points?'" asked the Joshua.

"Well, you have to...um, _have_ a Neku, if you know what I mean," N99 said uncomfortably, hoping his little wink would convey what he couldn't exactly say. He didn't want to upset the Neku in any way, lest he get bruised. _No Nekus will ever fall for a bruised Joshua_, he thought with a mix of smugness and fear. "Nekus have to...er, _get_ a Joshua. So..."

The two of N99's captors looked at each other. The air was suddenly charged with tension, and N99 sensed danger. "Ah, but don't worry! There's a whole lot of each, and new ones come in every day, so...yeah! Hee, hee...!"

The Joshua was still staring at the Neku. "But then...why...?"

"Um. Joshua? Neku? You can also form pacts." N99's eyes flicked back and forth from the Neku to the Josh nervously. With damaged units, you never knew if they might lash out at any moment. "Packs are pacts between three or more. And points are divided evenly between you and your partners. It's easier to get points, but harder to go up in rank, right? But most people do packs, because then they can bully the singles out of their Nekus and stuff. That's about all I know about it, but that's all you really need to know, right? Hee, hee..."

The wild Neku snapped out of confusion. "Book...get the book!" He gave his partner a shove. "Hurry! Write that down!"

The Joshua pulled out a tatty pink book and started scribbling. "Yes, sir – gyah-HOWW! Quit shoving me, it's rude!" And he gave the Neku a "little" shove in return.

Before the shoving match could break into full swing, N99 decided to intervene. "Ahem! Anything else? This rope is itchy."

"Oh, uh..." the Neku peeked over his partner's shoulder and mouthed some words. "...oh! Yeah. What's up with this whole night cycle thing?"

N99 looked at him blankly. "Only for Joshuas, silly-head."

"Do we have to ask you in Latin? Sing you our questions? Maybe spell them out in morse code with tap-dance shoes?" the Joshua exploded suddenly. "Does it _matter_ who asks? JUST. ANSWER." He looked like he hadn't been having the best of days.

However. That was no call to be_ rude_, in N99's opinion. "Ugh! But it's so obvious! I mean, if you'd spent one night together, you'd know!"

"We just met up this morning," the Joshua said quickly. A little too quickly.

"Is that so? Oh, I get it now." N99 nodded, pretending to be understanding. "Well, Joshuas fall asleep at nine in the evening and wake up at seven in the morning. That's all, really."

"Any exceptions?" the Joshua asked, looming over him.

"W-well, Nekus don't sleep...or so I heard..."

"What about Joshes?"

N99 sighed. He'd been hoping to avoid this, what with the Neku being right there and all. In private it was fine, but with a Neku in the room? It was just...impolite. But N99 looked at the Joshua and saw that there were to be no negotiations, otherwise...well, he'd rather not know what these two were capable of. "Well, an activated Joshua doesn't need sleep. It will stay awake until it collapses from energy loss."

"What triggers activation?" The Neku asked.

"...When the Neku...is ready...to be, um, _had_, then the Josh or Joshes that has or have claimed the Neku will activate," N99 said tenderly.

"Write that down!" the Neku hissed, shoving the Joshua. "Write that down!"

"I'm writing, I'm writing! ...And when is a Neku ready?"

"...You'll know," said N99 nervously. "You just know." That's what the BMI indexers were for, after all.

There was a period of silence as the Joshua scribbled down column after column of little Japanese squiggly things with the unrelenting ferocity of a hungry Daedra. He had a very good reason to, and it was sitting right next to him: every time he stopped to breathe, the Neku punched him in the arm until he started writing again. With a pattern like that, in under a minute he was done – or at least it seemed like it, because he stopped writing and asked, "So, what happens if a Joshua doesn't '_have_' a Neku?"

N99 immediately thought of his painfully creaky joints. "Well, it really depends on the model, but...you'll start deteriorating, running out of energy until you start to malfunction, and then one day you'll go into the night cycle and not wake up. And if someone finds you like that...comatose...well...you won't have long." N99 sighed, wishing he could massage his ankles.

Scribble, scribble. "You mentioned before that 'new ones come in every day,'" the Joshua remarked.

"Where do they come from?" asked the Neku.

"Huh?" N99 blinked. "Er, well, I just woke up in the scramble crossing one day. I assume it's the same for all. That's all I know." He squinted suspiciously. "...Why? Does it matter?"

The Joshua and the Neku glared at him. N99 shrank back.

"All right," the Neku said after a moment. "So, where's the girls?"

"Excuse me?"

The Neku rolled his eyes. "C'mon, dude. You may not swing that way..." - the Neku missed the way the Joshua ground his teeth, here - "...but there's got to be a chick SOMEWHERE. If only to pump out more demon spawn."

Neither N99 nor the crazy Joshua felt very happy about being called demon spawn, but they didn't show it. N99 was more confused than angry. "What..? A chick? You'll find those in bird's nests, Ne~kun..."

The Neku waved his hand dismissively. "No, no, my boy! I'm talking about WOMEN. As in, the things that make you sandwiches."

N99 blinked. "Defensives make sandwiches."

"_That's not nature's way_," the Neku replied adamantly, and the Joshua cut him off before he riled the female readers up any further with his unwitting misogyny.

"Defensives. What are those?"

"They...er, try to...well, it's complicated," N99 replied, looking uncomfortable. "It's a battle tactic. I can't really explain it in front of..." He then did a none-too-subtle head gesture in the direction of the Neku, who quickly pulled his finger out of his nose.

"Why not?"

"Well, er...I just can't, okay? It would ruin everything. You can't talk about the secret battle strategy and expect it to remain secret, can you?" N99 shook his head and sighed, with the familiar "I'm surrounded by _children_" atmosphere that pervaded Joshuas of all types. "There are defensives, offensives, and reversibles. And that's all I can say."

"Fair enough," the Joshua grumbled, and recorded this new knowledge.

The Neku reached over and bonked N99 on the head. "Hey, uh...what happened to Ten-Four, anyway?"

"Ten-four?" N99 blinked, uncomprehending.

The two interrogators sighed. "ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR, you monkey."

"...What?"

"Um, it's one of the more iconic shopping malls of Shibuya?"

"...What shopping mall? ...I don't-"

"Dude!" shouted the Neku in frustration. "The huge tower with the banner on it! And the weeds everywhere!"

N99 stared at the two defectives in disbelief, making faint noises in the back of his throat. "Hrh...hh...?" How dare they - _weeds!_ "They are _not_ weeds!" he finally scraped together. "They're the eyes of the all-seeing plant mother, Pamela! The bringer of bountiful harvest and the goddess of the slaughter of cattle! She is our savior in these dark times, when the Joshes outnumber the Nekus and points are so very hard to get. With her -"

"So you DO know what a girl is! Where are you keeping them?"

"There are none of your so-called_ 'girls_,'" N99 spat. "There have never been any, whatever they are! And we don't need them! We only need Nekus to survive-"

"If you've never seen any girls, then why would you call those weeds 'she's?"

"Because there is only one mother, and that is Pamela-"

Joshua saw fit to bash this thing right in the skull before his dignity burst into flames. "Actually, roses, like all plants, are hermaphroditic. Meaning they are of both genders. So this 'Pamela' of yours is no more female than an earthworm – she's more an 'it' than anything."

N99 started thrashing around in his bonds, forgetting that he was supposed to be being careful around the two damaged units. "Blasphemy! Sacrilege! You'll be sacrificed in the Holy Atrium, and buried alive in the nectar of the gods -"

N99 stopped about then, because only now did he realize that the slime the Joshua was covered in...the slime that coated his shirt in wet globs...the slime that dripped from the tip of his ponytail...

"You've been in there, haven't you?" N99 said slowly. "What - how - the high clergy - they throw the defective ones in the Pit! ...How did you-"Suddenly his voice grew thick with disgust. "You've broken in, haven't you? You've _intruded on holy ground_, HAVEN'T YOU?"

The Joshua and the Neku exchanged glances. "Er," said the Joshua. "...define 'intruded.'"

* * *

I now present the "condensed version." That is, what Joshua wrote in the pink book.

J/NIVERSE LEGENDS AND J/NIVERSE FACTS,

-ACCORDING TO N99-

On the amount of clones: "For the Game, of course. You have to get 99 points, and then you win. Joshuas get points by, er...'having' Nekus, and Nekus get points when they 'get' Joshuas. And when you get 99 points, you go into a white building and then they take you away."

On Joshua activation: "Not Neku-friendly."

On the origin of Joshuas and Nekus: "'Who knows? I just woke up in the scramble one day, with instructions on my phone. Same for everyone. I don't know where we're 'coming from,' and I don't see how it matters.' Conclusive proof that N99 and other Joshua clones are idiots. Of course it matters."

On the subject of "Reversibles" and other such things: "There are three tactical strategies, to our knowledge. You come with either an Offensive, Defensive, or Reversible mindset."

On females: "None. D': [Anekudote: Except for Pamela, but she's a weed.]"

On what ever the HELL happened to ten-four: "104 is apparently the sacred home of the heart of Pamela, the goddess of life, harvest, and the deception and slaughtering of lambs. It's holy ground, and no one but the high clergy is allowed in. Oops."

Enlightening, huh?

"No," snapped our Joshua.

After they had sliced through the Josh's bonds, he decided he was in the totally appropriate position for bargaining. "You two naughty boys went into the heart of Pamela, didn't you? That's holy ground," he repeated, smirking and wheedling his foot on the ground with a faint creaking noise. "I really should tell the high clergy about this...I really should...tsk...what to do, what to do?" He stuck his finger in his cheek and made a dopey face that seemed to imply pondering.

Our Joshua had decided he hated this twat's guts and would have slammed a beam of holy light directly through the abomination's cranium - if he had been on his home plane, that is. For now, he could only gnash his teeth and hope that Neku gave the order to bonk this hideous mockery out of existence. He contented himself by blocking the only means of escape, meaning that if their captive decided to try any funny, he'd have a full array of suplexes standing between him and freedom. Joshua was glad that his borderline-obsessive memorization of every single one of Supermask's wrestling matches was finally paying off. "Quick to play the mom card, hm? Honestly, I expected more class from you...ugh..."

Neku was rubbing his temples. "Great...just guh-friggin-reat..." He straightened up, and if you had been staring into his eyes at the moment, you could see, through a whorl of conflicting blues, the bright azure of his heart and the cold steel of his brain locked in a deadly embrace as they clashed against each other, fighting for dominance. However, Joshua was currently staring intensely at a big-ass bluebottle fly that had landed on his nice (slime-covered, but still nice) shoe and so missed out on all the blue action going on in his partner's irises; and so he had no idea of the gravity of the decision that Neku made in that moment.

Neku's eyes glinted like steel as the logical part of himself beat his emotions into submission beneath its lavender boots. "So..." he said, approaching the Joshua and swallowing hard. "So."

The Joshua looked at him and smiled serenely. "So what?"

"I...you won't tell anyone about this - about anything - understand?"

"And why not?" The Joshua's smile widened unnaturally, splitting his face in half like a gash. "What's in it for me?"

"This," Neku choked out, and then he stepped forward, grabbed the clone around his shoulders so he couldn't jerk away and mess up the trajectory, and bumped his face into the other boy's cheek. Being unable to purse his lips at the sight of the strangely wide mouth, Neku botched the attempt - it was supposed to be a sort of peck on the cheek, but it became more of a facial bonking. Neku felt an uncomfortable twinge in the base of his spine – when his nose had been pressed to the other boy's cheek momentarily, he had discovered that the Joshua smelled faintly of decaying meat. He drew back as quickly as he could. "...That. Yeah."

The Josh sneered, his weirdly stretched mouth twerking upwards in a grimace that could barely be called a smirk, his pupils dilating slightly too much. With nostrils flaring slightly, he shook his head. "Oh, no. That's not gonna cut it, _Nekky-dear_."

(Our Joshua was still staring at the fly. God DAMN, that thing was huge. He wondered if it was the kind of demonic hellspawn fly that ate little dead boys and their model pickup trucks. Not being an expert on flies, he resolved to stay as still as possible until the horrible thing left.)

And the clone brought his arms up and laced his fingers behind the nape of Neku's neck, and looked into his frightened eyes with his too-wide pupils. His smirk grew slightly more twisted. Neku cringed, slightly. The clone's face was wrong. The way his mouth was too wide, the way his eyes were too big, like owl eyes – his features were not blatantly monstrous; they were tweaked ever so slightly, so that it was almost unnoticeable. They were only minor changes, really. Perhaps it was even more unsettling that way.

And the creepy face was so close, and Neku could see himself reflected in the black holes in the Joshua's eyes...and now? And now...

Neku gulped. He had brought this on himself. But if the thing told, well...who knew what these "clergy" dipshits would do to them? Brainwash 'em, or something. Gaaahh. Neku closed his eyes and pictured Shiki. And then he dipped forward, and pressed his lips to the ghastly Joshua's, weeping quietly inside.

Several wet, drool-slick seconds later, the shuddery feeling in Neku's back – like a colony of sea cucumbers had coiled around his spinal column and were sweating mucous all over his nerve endings – grew too much to bear. It wasn't the "kissing," per se, but the fact that the clone was staring at him with gigantic owl eyes the whole time; and the hot smell of fetid meat didn't do much to help matters. Enough was enough, Neku decided. He tried to shove the Joshua away, but to his horror he discovered that, sometime during the proceedings, the Joshua had trailed its sharp fingers down from Neku's neck, and the Joshua now had an iron grip on his shoulders. The weirdly sharpened nails dug into his flesh whenever he moved, like he was wrapped in a choker of thorns. The point here being that he was currently locked in place, helpless to do anything but continue making fish-like motions with his mouth and inhale the wet smell of hamburger straight from the meat grinder. Neku tried to kind of twist his head away but the Joshua moved sinuously with him and – good grief. Right about then he was struck with the image of what this whole thing must look like to any innocent bystanders.

Such as our Joshua. Who, to his credit, had not taken his eyes off the fly.

Neku groaned in utter despair, but the clone must have taken it the wrong way, because he became less like a golden retriever and more like a lamprey in the whole oral fixation business. Although that was an improvement in some ways, it's a lot harder to pull a bloodsucking monstrosity from the deep off of your lower lip than it is to shove a big friendly puppy-dog off your tummy. You know how, in those jacuzzi bathtubs, there's always that little nub with all the holes on it, and if you touch it you get a mark that looks like you clamped your hand in a waffle iron and forgot about it? Neku felt like he was kissing one of those. Underwater. With the jets on. Joshua, apparently, does not know to keep it dry.

After what was less than a minute but felt like a slimy eternity, the Joshua let go. With the sound of a toilet plunger being removed from the clogged maw of a particularly nasty john – shhhllUGHK – he kind of released Neku from the facial gripping and such. A delicate strand of saliva bridged the gap between the two for a second, hanging there like a shimmering strand of spider-silk, until Neku viciously judo-chopped it into halves with great prejudice. He felt like stomping on flowers and kicking puppies for a while, maybe pissing on a few rainbows and slitting his wrists. The nudibranch colony wrapped around his spine had died, decayed, and now the slushy remains were trickling in cold, slimy rivers down his lower back. It was a rather unpleasant feeling.

The Joshua clone, on the other hand, looked like Christmas had come early and he actually happened to celebrate it, hoo hee ha. His face lit up like the fourth of July, or Bonfire Night, or something involving pyrotechnics displays, and the weirdly elongated mouth slimmed to a normal size as he wiped some excess saliva away. ("Some," a word which here means "a friggin' crapload.") "Wow-ee, Neku," the Josh said, grinning like a fat kid presented with a lollipop. "That was so generous of you! Most Nekus aren't so inclined to help out us Joshuas, but... It's good to know that some people still care, hee hee! Seriously, thanks bunches. You have no idea how much this helps. Really. Thank you!" He waved and giggled even more girlishly than was the standard. "And don't you worry your pretty heads, my dears; I'm not the type to kiss and tell~~~! Bye-bye~!"

The Joshua flounced away, radiating an aura of pink sugar sweetness and cloying floral car fresheners, a decidedly un-creaky spring in his step.

Neku busied himself with wiping his face off.

The bluebottle flew off around this time, and our dear Joshua breathed a sigh of relief. He looked up at Neku and said, "So, what'd I miss?"

Neku paused in the act of defiling his collar with Joshua slime to glare at his partner. He didn't even need to speak, he just sorta_ looked _at him.

Joshua, being a blockhead, decided to blatantly ignore the subtle connotations of that_ look_. "What'dya give him?"

"You weren't watching?"

"Did you want me to?"

Joshua had no idea why he was punched in the face for that.

"Seriously," he mumbled, pulling himself into a sitting position and rubbing the latest addition to his facial decorum. "What did you do to that thing? I heard a lot of wet noises."

"I..." Neku made a face. "...kissed him, I guess."

"Oh," said Joshua. _How awkward_, he mused, rubbing his poor abused cheeky-weeky. But he was getting a sick, heavy feeling in his stomach – not exactly because of the "kissing," per se - as to Neku's reasoning. "Out of curiosity, why would you do that?" He threw in a bit of a smirk here, just to spite him.

"You said that's what they want," Neku snarled, not wanting to talk about this. "In other words, what YOU want, you sick, sick ringworm-riddled cream puff."

Joshua didn't so much as flinch, but the anger was rising all the same. His feverish state left him quite testy. "Ahh. I suppose you are an authority on what Joshua wants, right? The way you throw yourself at them...tsk, tsk...it's all very telli-"

"I do NOT throw myself at them!" Neku protested, kicking his partner in the ribs. "They come after me!"

"Which totally explains why you _decided_ to swap spit with one," Joshua snapped, nodding in mock understanding. His head hurt, his sides hurt, he wanted to go _home_...ohhh...and he was still very tired, and sick, and he really didn't care about his image at this point. "_Why would you do that? _You HATE me!"

"I don't hate you!" Neku shouted.

A few tense seconds passed in silence.

"...Forgive me, I was under the impression that you wanted to paint murals with my organs," Josh finally said after a while. The stinging pain in his face and side had faded away, and seemed trivial compared to his throbbing headache. Joshua touched his cheek gingerly. "...Or at least bonk my face in."

"...Not really," Neku said stiffly. "Not really. I just...dislike you a whole lot. But I don't exactly..._hate _you. You're my ticket home, after all."

"Oh. Goody," Joshua said. He groaned and got to his feet, rubbing his temples. "That really _sates my fragile ego_, you know."

There was another moment of silence; a pregnant pause.

"Alright. Whatever. So he'll be quiet, and all that. Good. Fantastic work, proxy." Joshua picked up the pink book, sighing. "I don't care what you did to him. I really don't. He matters not." He flicked through the slime-spotted pages, finally coming to a stop on their list. "So then. I doubt we'll get anything more useful out of any other Joshes." He sighed raggedly. "Want to try Nekus, or something else?"

Neku blinked. "...You sound mad."

"That's because I am, dunderhead."

"Why are you mad?" Neku looked a little worried. For some reason, he started backing up and checking the sky. "I didn't even know you could get mad..."

"I'm a human, too," Joshua said, sounding almost...pained. Almost.

Neku sighed. "...Sorry, dude. Just...you're just, like, the personification of three-c's, ya know?"

Joshua smiled a little at that, but it didn't do much to help his mood overall. He snapped the pink book shut. "You're not the only one suffering, here." _You aren't the one locked in the closet with the Thing, you aren't the one getting beaten up constantly, you aren't the one with the head cold, you aren't the one who has to watch yourself do things you'd never want to do, you aren't the one who has to delude yourself into thinking that people who "dislike you a whole lot" are your friends... _Joshua sighed. "It's hard on me, too. You may not like me, but...if we work together, we can get this done, and I can get you home. I can get _us_ home."

Neku felt something inside of him writhe like a serpentine water dragon, rearing its crested head and blowing puffs of spray at the back of his throat. The urge - the urge to go off on one of his compulsive motivational speeches - it was overpowering. And if it had been anyone else before him, Neku would have succumbed, cranking up the cheesy until his circuits blew.

But it was not to be, for Neku knew that Joshua was a manipulative bastard. He was, Neku reminded himself, the same guy who walked by dying Reapers as if it were none of his concern; the same guy whose idea of character-building entailed murder and mindscrewery; the same guy who had tried to nuke Shibuya for no reason that Neku could see other than that he was bored of it; the same guy who toyed with human minds as though they were nothing more than playthings supplied for his entertainment. And now he was baring his soul to _Neku? _

No way. Not buying it. It totally went aganst the image of Josha that Neku had built up in his mind. Neku crossed his arms, figuring that Josh was probably just looking for an ego-stoking. Or maybe trying to bait him into expressing _compassion_, and then he'd make some little _remark_ and - BAMF! Giggle City.

Neku decided not to blindly putter into the trap like a fool. He DID trust Joshua, but not on a conversational level. You see, Neku _really_ hated being laughed at. And so, Neku "defied" Joshua by deliberately not reacting.

"So...d'you have a plan yet?" Neku asked.

Joshua looked at him, a flicker of something - hurt? - passing over his face, clouding his eyes. But it vanished as quickly as it had come. So quickly, in fact, that had Neku blinked, he would have missed it completely. There was a brief pause as Joshua sucked in a long breath, and then he was off again, prattling away like nothing was wrong. If he was anything, Joshua was a chatterbox.

"No, not yet. We need more information about this place before we start drafting battle strategies," Joshua said, shaking his head. "I'm loathe to admit it, but apparently you were right – I am a smarmy jackass who takes forever to get to the point, if at all." He said that almost bitterly.

"Sorry," Neku said again, feeling a little pang of guilt. Maybe he shouldn't have just ignored Joshua's sappy little speech like that...oh, well. "I just - I feel funny. Like, my back keeps getting all squirmy and stuff."

Joshua looked at him strangely. "Like I said...we'll need to investigate. That putrid copy mentioned a 'white building,' where they take the winners of this world's Game."

"So...you think we should go there next?"

Josh nodded. "Yes. It's the only lead we have, anyway. Perhaps we can find out more about this world's Game, and the rules that which the Joshes and Nekus are bound to. Among other things."

"Cool," said Neku, stuffing his hands in his pockets. Although, he really didn't see how that would help.

After a moment, Joshua just had to ask. "...How was it, anyway?"

"How was what?"

"You know."

"...DUDE."

"H-hey, don't look at me like that! I don't get to practice often, since I kind of live in the sewer. So I'm always looking for feedback – 'concrit,' if you will." Joshua's eyes glittered curiously.

Neku sighed. "Ugh, whatever...well, honestly?" He shrugged. "Average."

"Average?"

"Yeah," said Neku. "Like, not even good. Or bad. Just...average." He made a face. "If you like, y'know, take out all the drowning-me-in-saliva and the creepy face and the fact that oh dear,_ it's JOSHUA_. It was just...meh."

"Meh?"

"Meh," Neku said sadly, shaking his head.

Joshua felt rather put-out.

* * *

**A/N:** Neku, you poor thing. You have to suffer too.

No, no, that wasn't his first kiss. Neku's kissed a bunch of girls, because he's cool. It's not so much of a big deal if your thirty-seventh kiss is with a bizarre clone of your rival, as opposed to your first kiss, right? Still gross, but...eh.

Joshua, on the other hand, has not engaged in much kissery. Because, aside from the fact that the kid doesn't really socialize much, if you get within kissing range, you discover that he smells faintly of sewage. And also cinnamon toast and butterscotch. ...And that's not exactly a good combination. But he practices on cabbage patch kids.

JOSHUA'S TRIVIA TIDBITS: Cabbage Patch Kids were created and distributed so that, in the event of a nuclear winter, we'd already be used to looking at mutated babies.

I am very sorry if you are offended by Neku and his boyish obliviousness. We will now pit him against the Spirit of Feminism. Excuse me while I call the carpet cleaners in advance.

Neku: ...o-o;;

Joshua: I will not be held responsible for this. *casually slides under table*

-PLEASE STAND BY-


	8. In which Rain is Danced In

_**JOSHUA TRIPS**_

CHAPTER EIGHT: IN WHICH NEKU AND JOSHUA GO DANCING IN THE RAIN

Summary: Joshua hasn't been very forthcoming with information, surprise surprise. But the mention of a mysterious white building has lead our heroes to investigate...perhaps they will find out just exactly what is wrong with this place. But first of all, Neku has a problem...

Rating: T for cool stuff, yucky stuff, and bad language you shouldn't be using

OF NOTE IN THIS CHAPTER: Neku hits That Bee with devastating consequences, as far as cell phone games are concerned. And also, Joshua is a jerk, but you totally saw that coming, didn't you?

Genre: Still Parody/Adventure...

* * *

They left the alleyway like spies, ducking and rolling behind trash cans and stuff so as to not be detected by any stray highclergyfolk. This went well until Joshua rolled _into _a trash can and spilled its contents all over Neku.

"The sickness has made me weak," Joshua explained, dodging Neku's first few attempts at bonking him senseless. This wasn't so big of an accomplishment, seeing as how Neku had been blinded by a banana peel.

The fourth swing connected loudly and Joshua fell down with a bump. "Ha! You can't run from justice," Neku sneered, pulling the banana off his eyes. It took a few good yanks, since the peel had apparently chemically reacted with some kind of carpet cleaner that had leaked all over in the garbage can, and had grown squid-like suckers.

Joshua groaned and got to his feet, wiping his pants off. "Bonking the sick is not _justice_, Neku."

Neku sighed abruptly. "You know what, Josh? I think I could eat a horse."

"We just ate," Joshua snapped. He didn't see how getting dunked in garbage stimulated the appetite, especially when the garbage in question looked halfway to becoming toxic waste or perhaps a new invertebrate life form. Seriously, it looked like it hadn't been touched in ages. AND IT WAS ON HIS SHOES.

Neku pouted. "Three _hours_ ago...c'mon, I gotta wash the taste out of my mouth..."

"Hush, you big baby. We can go eat after we find that white building."

This was not a satisfactory answer. "How 'bout we eat _now,_ and _then_ look?"

"Oh, Neku. Get your brain out of your stomach."

"No, seriously. What if we're in the midst of a big undercover operation, and we're sneaking past the guards, and all of a sudden my stomach grumbles and alerts them to our presence? BAM, Sacrifice City!"

Joshua rolled his eyes. But now that Neku had said it, it seemed like the only logical thing that would happen, taking into account Joshua's terrible luck. That didn't mean he had to go down without a fight. "Ugh...well, I've just been swallowing post-nasal drip all day and it's not exactly yummy stuff."

Neku nodded, as if this all fit into his master plan. "Then logically, you should eat a few hamburgers or something to give your stomach something _substantial_ to chew on. Otherwise, you'll get a tummyache."

"Pfft. Hamburgers are yucky."

"Conclusive proof that you are _one twisted sister_." Neku shook his head. "Who doesn't like hamburgers?"

"Me. How about ramen instead?"

"Ramen again? We had that yesterday!"

"Yes, we did. And it was delicious." Joshua sighed dreamily, thinking of the big wet eyes and soft, tender fish cheeks. They were like doors in a dream world, a dream world where the doors lead to a staircase that lead to PARADISE.

"Bah. I still don't want to go in there again," Neku muttered, folding his arms. "It was full of wackjobs."

"I'm not even going to point out the implications of that," Joshua said.

The flame-crested one threw up his hands, bouncing on his heels. "Oh, fine! You win! Let's just _go_, before my stomach inverts and digests itself!"

Joshua deliberately took as much time as possible to get over to his partner's side. "Neku, Neku, Neku. You can't eat if you're covered in...filth..."

Neku bent over and shook himself like a dog in response, grimacing. "Is that _better?_"

Joshua sidestepped the spray, as graceful as a goose. "Oh, yes. Now, it's off to Dogenzak-ah...oh..." As the pale boy turned towards their goal, he saw Pork City - _really_ saw it - for the first time. It was as if he had been stuck in a perpetual blonde moment all up to this very second, and was only just regaining intelligence. _It has to be the head cold. It has to b_e, Joshua reassured himself, somewhat frantically. _I'm not losing my edge, no, I'm_ not...

"What?"

Josh pointed at Pork City.

Now, Pork City was supposed to be this huge, two-building facility - a city within the city. Hence the name. One building, the East, houses Excel Hotel Porkyu, which is, as I understand it, sort of like a combination-mall-hotel-resort kinda thing. Like a Galleria, I suppose, with a cafe and two restaurants and about sixty commercial shops. You can get beer and cigarettes from the vending machines there. The West building is full of offices and unimportant stuff like that. So, basically, you could go into Pork City and never need to come back out. (This is a common phenomenon in Japan; since it's so overcrowded, they build self-contained environments all over the place. Not to mention the indoor beaches and indoor ski slopes and all that.) Anyway. A bazillion windows span the sides of both buildings, occupying most of the wallspace. It has so many windows, in fact, that at night when the lights come on the facility looks golden. But normally, during the day, it's kind of a grayish-white color, mixed with the very-prevalent color "window."

It's _not_ supposed to be whiter than the purest snow, without a window to be seen. It is also _definitely_ not supposed to have vines crawling up the sides like black veins.

"What are the odds?" said Joshua, his voice slightly muffled by the palm on his face.

"Yeah...geez, how'd we miss that?" Neku scratched the back of his head, almost as annoyed at their collective obliviousness as Joshua. "How _did_ we miss that?"

"...I suppose we HAVE to go to Ramen Don now, since it's on the way," Joshua muttered, perturbed. He was still trying to reassure himself that overlooking things was completely acceptable behavior for sick people. Neku had no such excuse, so he hurried Joshua along in the direction of the noodle bar before his not-friend's sicky brain could comment on that.

* * *

They wound up seated at a different booth, this time. It was positioned by the window, with a big plant tendril protruding through the wall and wrapped around the table like some kind of bloated, earthen python-fence hybrid. Joshua stepped gingerly over the gigantic plant root, scowling, and took a seat. Neku did the same; only, he had to sit next to Joshua, given that the other side of the booth had been taken over by roots and such. It looked quite uncomfortable. "Seriously, why don't they trim that weed already?" Neku grumbled, irritated by the seating arrangements.

Joshua patted Neku on the arm and gave a motherly sigh. "Neku, Neku, Neku. She's the all-seeing plant goddess of the deception and slaughter of lambs. She doesn't have to clip her toenails if she doesn't want to."

Both just_ had_ to snicker.

Eventually, though, the euphoria wore off and they settled back into the familiar stiff silence that comes when you're not really friends with each other. Not yet. Joshua didn't like feeling uncomfortable, so he pulled out his phone, opened up the High N Low app, and started clicking away, blasting tiny pixellated crabs with angel-lasers. With every little crab-meat explosion, Joshua's smirk etched itself deeper and deeper into his face, his eyes glittering with vengeance. God, he hated crabs.

Now, crabs are sort of like the tarantulas of the deep. Except, you know, everything that comes from underwater seems to be equipped for tactical warfare. A perfect example of this phenomenon happens to be said crabs, which in Joshua's eyes were essentially armored tarantulas with claws – not only that, they could _breathe underwater,_ so if you got pinched by one, jumping into the ocean wouldn't save you. No, you had to engage in hand-to-hand combat with the godawful thing and manually unclamp the pincers from your tummy while it slowly flexed its thick, chitinous legs. That right there was another problem with the crab; its legs were like fingers. So, in essence, a crab was basically a severed hand with the bones on the outside, big ugly claws, and a spidery gait that could breathe underwater. The fact that they liked to hide under interesting rocks and inside of intriguing shells and then ambush any curious fingers didn't really win them any Josh points. In his esteemed opinion, the crab was a hideous abomination and a cancerous affront to nature. On a completely unrelated side note, Joshua happened to be allergic to crab meat.

While Joshua was busy killing crabs under the table, Neku was fidgeting around, getting antsy because his music player was dead and he wasn't_ doing_ anything. Out of the sheer desire to annoy, he leaned over Josh's shoulder and breathed down his neck for a few minutes, noting the rising goosebumps with satisfaction. He also noticed that Joshua's neck hairs were the same ash-blonde color as his cranial fluffiness, proving it was natural and most definitely _not a wig_. Darn. Joshua's neck smelled faintly of sewage, but more strongly of butterscotch and cinnamon toast. Cinnamon toast, Neku was okay with. But butterscotch? Words cannot describe how much Neku despised butterscotch. How'd he get butterscotch back there, anyway? Neku tutted disapprovingly. Oh, hello there, little mole...never seen you before...huh, what's this? Joshua was playing a cell phone game? Now, _that_ was infinitely more interesting than Joshua's neck.

In the midst of his mathinating, Joshua felt a _presence_ looming over his shoulder. He slowly rotated his head around 180 degrees to face Neku's.

"Hey," said Neku.

Joshua narrowed his eyes. "Can I help you?"

"Hey, I didn't know it was a real game."

"It's not," Joshua said proudly. "I programmed it myself. Made all the sprites, too."

"No you did not," Neku snapped.

Joshua rolled his eyes and gave a resigned sigh. He had made the music, too, but suddenly he felt weirdly embarrassed about it. He quickly turned the sound off.

"A wise decision," Neku said with a sagely nod. "Audio will run your battery down."

Joshua had not thought about that.

Neku peeked over his partner's shoulder to observe the furious solving of inequalities first-hand. Sure, he'd played it mentally with Josh when they had been trying to barf out enough fusion stars to bonk Sho on the head with the moon, but it occurred to him that he had never actually seen the High N Low game itself. It looked almost exactly like the combo map and fusion cards Joshua fought with, but it was a little different. Apparently, you controlled a little midget Joshua trying to zap an advancing armada of infinite crustacean demons one by one before they grabbed him and cut off his ankles with tattoo-claws. You had to select a number that was either less than, greater than, or equal to the number at the top of the screen, according to the little arrow thingies - blah blah blah, seen it - and if you got it right, lasers and junk would obliterate the target with an almost brutal fury. Every now and again, Minijosh would chuck an inexplicable red pickup truck at the enemies. Sometimes a spider Noise or a fly Noise would show up, and Joshua would make funny noises and click so fast that the numbers vanished before Neku could read them. And when the bee Noise came by, Joshua would cease all function until it left, whimpering.

"You wuss," Neku said with a sneer. "Lemme try, I'll get that bee."

"No way," Joshua said adamantly, never taking his eyes off the intense clickery. "You are no match for That Bee, dearie."

Neku made a face and took the phone without asking.

"Hey! _Neku!_ Give it _back_, you'll mess up my score-"

"Shut your face, cream puff!" Neku started clicking away on the control pad. "Heh, this is easy!"

And indeed it was easy (the second week of the Game had trained him well in mathematics) - at least, until That Bee showed up.

Neku kept clicking away, the tip of his tongue sticking out and the whole of his brain absorbed in the relentless mathinating of arachnids. Joshua wanted to bury his face in his hands and mourn the coming loss of innocence, but he was far too cool for that, so he kept watching. That Bee came buzzing in from the right side of the screen, drifting around lazily and humming an ever-so-slightly arrhythmic, off-key tune. Of course, you couldn't hear that with the audio switched off, so it bypassed Neku completely.

For a second, Joshua hoped his friend wouldn't notice it at all – alas, 'twas not to be. "Hehehehe...Hello there, bee."

"Neku, don't taunt it, you'll make it mad..." Joshua moaned.

"Aw, quit yer whining. C'mere, bee..."

Fine. If he wanted to embrace his doom, so be it. Josh reached over and turned the volume up.

"H-Hey! What are you—you're cramping my sty—hey! Don't-"

"Hush! You need to hear its death scream," Joshua said with a weak attempt at a smirk. That Bee scared him. And he'd _programmed_ the darn thing.

Neku targeted it all the same. Less than five. Easy peasy. He clicked to a three with lightning speed and launched a blast of holy crap.

And then the game emitted a high-pitched whining noise, the sound of a tiny loop of music being played over and over – the sound of a game breaking. Pieces and pieces of the screen corrupted, and then the whole thing went black, still emitting that awful noise. Suddenly, it stopped. There was a horrible, unnatural shriek and-

"...Oh. OH. OH, NO. OH, NO NO NO NO..."

"HOW COULD YOU, NEKU? AUGHHH!"

"AHEM."

The two boys froze and let their gazes slowly roll upwards.

"Would you like to order, this fine day? Or would you rather flail around like a couple of kids who don't like math and are stuck in an endless math class?"

"That was weak," Joshua noticed. Sho snorted and thumped his ordering pad thingy with his pen.

"One shoyu, and one shio," said Neku before Joshua could begin taunting the caged corporate monkey. "Er, please."

"Story of my frickin' life," Sho muttered, and stomped off without even writing anything on the pad.

"Why didn't he write anything?" Joshua wondered aloud, suspicious.

"Quit making everything into a _conspiracy_, dude." Neku gestured to the rest of the Ramen Don and all of its occupants. "They probably all get the same thing, ya know?"

"...Precisely," said Joshua. "But then why does he have a pad?"

"In case people decide to order the Big Catch," Neku said, lifting his eyebrow ever-so-slightly.

Joshua looked at him innocently for a moment, and then snatched his phone and went back to business. "Okay, so here's what you do..."

"Ugh, look at that bloody eye!"

"Ignore it, Neku..." Joshua tossed his hair. "Thanks to you, now we have to find a way out of here."

"Seriously—oh god, is that a lamprey mouth in his—oh, NO..."

"Now pay careful attention to the woman's head vomiting blood in the background -"

"The one impaled on a bloody spine in a field of chicken fetuses?"

"Yes, that one," Joshua said crisply. "Note how, in the soundtrack, the violin gets all affected when we pass. A nice touch, if I say so myself..."

"Ew! Dude, that is beyond creepy!"

"I told you, don't screw with That Bee."

"That Bee...That horrible Bee..." Neku shuddered. "I like how the shifting colors of the screen makes everything look jittery and feverish," he added brightly.

This went on for a while.

* * *

Sho Minamimoto really hated the Josh clones. He hated them for what they did to Shibuya, and for what they did to his sculptures. He remembered, back three or so years, when there had only been a few of them and you could still leave Shibuya if you had a permit – before Pamela, before the end. Sho had been just a delinquent then, a high school drop-out with no way to pay for college tuition, and nobody who wanted to take him, anyway. Regardless of his math skills. It wasn't exactly his fault that he had dropped out, anyway – he had run off because of some stupid fight with his parents. But then, the Game had started, and he was trapped, with no way to get back to them, no way to get back to school, no way out.

He curled his lip as he tied an apron around his waist and went to check on the broth. Oh yes, Sho remembered exactly what had happened – he had gotten a Squishie from the juice stand and went off to skulk by the CAT mural, as usual. And then the sky had turned a strange yellowish color, and he could only watch as the force field came down from above and sliced his world, his life, in two, like a horrible golden guillotine. There was no escape after the Wall had been put up, only if you had a permit – and you had to have the signature of a relative who was over 18. Sho had been only 15 when the Game had begun.

The Wall was impervious. It could not be broken, it could not be seen over. Sho had taken to building piles - piles of stuff that he just found in places, junk nobody wanted. He would take the junk and stack it up, using his knowledge of mathematics to make sure each was sturdy enough to hold his weight. He would build his piles, and then he'd climb on top and see if he could jump over the Wall and get back home. While scrounging around in the junk heaps, he found stuff that stopped looking like garbage and started resembling spicy tuna rolls, and he suddenly didn't need to take breaks from his piling to steal food from Sunshine Burger. As a result, the piles grew larger, and larger, and larger. But the Wall was always higher, a shimmering curtain of cold, golden indifference.

One day, Sho had gotten a visitor. Ken Doi. "Why do you build those things?" he had asked tiredly.

"I need to, I need to," said Sho, with the crackle of desperation in his voice. "I've got to get over this wall, I've got to get home."

"You can't," said Ken Doi. "It's a dome."

It seemed so silly, but it crushed Sho from the inside out. Mr. Doi sighed.

"I suppose you're trapped here, then?"

Sho had nodded, still struck dumb. _Trapped._

"Fine. Come with me, kiddo."

And so, Sho had been taken under the wing of Ken Doi, ramen artisan. He had learned how to make noodles from the best, ramen coming second only to math in Sho's obsessive head. He had poured his soul into learning how to cook chukamen noodles, if only because there was nothing left for him to do. With no other place to go, he had resolved to become as best a ramen cook as he could. And as the months passed by, Sho had gotten quite good at the practice. It was almost like a math equation, the recipes – like chemistry. Sho had always been good at chemistry, because it was basically math with elements instead of numbers. This was the same thing, only now it was noodles and soy sauce and ginger.

At first, there were other people along with the Players. They would sometimes get the more complicated soups, but the Joshes and the Nekus always ordered the same thing. Shio and shoyu. But the thing was, they started to crowd out the other customers, until they were the only ones. And they always, always ordered the same thing, until the other cooks, Eiji and Megumi, had been pushed out of the kitchen to wait tables. Sho had been appointed to being the chief of soy-sauce ramen production, while Ken Doi had taken over the salt front, saying that the Joshes required 'special' ingredients to sate their appetites. And now, Sho and Ken Doi were shackled to a life of making the same thing, over and over and over and over and over and over...

Until yesterday. The one Josh had ordered two Big Catches. How did he even know? They had stopped putting out menus ages ago. But the Big Catch stuff was still in the fridge, and they ate it sometimes when all the Joshes had gone to sleep. Only occasionally, because Megumi's delicate stomach couldn't handle the fish. Sometimes it seemed like that guy existed on insta-noodles. But anyway. How did that one Josh know about it?

Sho strained the soup thoughtfully. Hmm. That didn't factor out right at all. Well, _whatever_. He knew that Nekus didn't like picking through a bunch of stuff on their noodles and would rather have it plain, so he just poured it over the waiting seven bowls of chukamen. He picked up one bowl and, leaving the rest to prissy polynomial Eiji, went over to where Ken Doi set the special shio ramen. There were several bowls waiting, but Sho only picked up one - since he could never get the hang of carrying a bunch at once, Sho always had to wait one table at a time. By contrast, the Prince of Ennui could stack 15 bowls on his head, and made a much more efficient waiter.

He went back out to the floorspace of the store, back over to where the Josh and the Neku were sitting. _The booth of the gods_, Sho thought with a sigh. These two kids were weird, too – they seemed less touchy-feely and more...human. They both looked beat up, and the Joshua had his long hair tied back in a slightly slimy ponytail. Now that _never_ happened. And didn't the Big Catch Joshua have longish hair too? And come to think of it, the Neku hadn't spiked his hair that day. How strange.

"Here ya go, radians," Sho sneered, plonking the soups down in front of the two. They were bickering over a cell phone game – the Josh's cell phone game – but Joshuas never shared their phones!

"Huh, what?" the Joshua looked up, startled. "Oh, thank you."

"Yeah," said the Neku distractedly. "Thanks."

Sho stared at them for a second. Could they be...the same kids from yesterday? Sho wasn't too sure – after serving an infinite amount of Joshuas, they all start to look the same. But he had his suspicions.

"Thank you," said the Joshua staring right back. "You can_ leave_, now."

Sho shrugged and went back to crank out more shoyu ramen. A whole gang of Nekus had just been herded through the door by two very smug looking Joshuas. Sho sighed – it was going to be a loooong day.

* * *

Joshua watched Sho go back to the kitchen, suspicious. "He knows something," he declared finally. "Or he knows someone who knows something."

"There's like, this theory, right? You know a person who knows a person who knows a person who has sat next to someone on the bus who knows a person who knows a person who once called them on accident intending to call a person who knows a person who knows Harrison Ford. Or something like that," Neku supplied, stuffing a wad of noodles in his mouth and chewing slowly.

Joshua squinted and tilted his head. "I think we should ask him some questions," he said in a conspiratorial whisper. "If we get a chance."

"Eat your noodles."

Joshua sighed and broke his chopsticks. They came away uneven – noooo! Joshua shook his fist at the heavens, but set to work anyway.

It took him a second to realize that something was wrong with his shio ramen.

"...Hey," Joshua said, crinkling his brow. "I'm not in paradise..."

"Whrrt's wrrng wrf rt?" Neku asked, through a mouthful of soy sauce and stuff. His tasted fine.

Joshua smacked his lips once or twice, trying to place what exactly was off about his soup. Not the noodles, those were okay. It was – it had to be the broth, didn't it? Like they hadn't used the typical tuna in the dashi soup stock – or like they hadn't used dashi at all! They had substituted it some kind of foreign what-have-you! "What the hell?" he said, kind of louder than was necessary.

Neku swallowed and poked him. "What's your problem, dude?"

"Th-this isn't right!" Joshua said, staring at his soup, which might as well have been mashed beetle paste as far as he was concerned. "There's no...this cannot be!"

"What?"

Joshua turned to look at Neku, eyes wide. "The dashi...is MISSING."

Neku laughed. "Oh, really? You think Ramen Guy hates you that much?" And then, because he was cooking-illiterate: "...what's dashi, again?"

"Absolutely fundamental to Japanese cookery," Joshua declared, poking at his soup with his chopsticks as one might poke an autopsy of an extraterrestrial with a set of probes. "This is...what is it?"

Neku shrugged. "Mine's perfect," he said. "It's definitely 'that's good' material. Why'd they screw yours up?"

Joshua made a face and kept poking. He felt his chopstick slide into something that felt oddly like flesh, and so he pulled it out to examine it. It was a strip of...chicken? Or something like it, some kind of meat. Joshua stared at it. Well, it didn't suddenly start begging for mercy, so he took a bite. _What the heck? It's like spam...but...not spam...what is it? _Joshua pursed his lips and tried it again. It tasted kind of like pork, but it definitely was not pork...

After a minute or two of internal debate as to whatever it was, Joshua decided he needed a second opinion. He presented the strip of meat to Neku. "Here, try this – tell me what this tastes like."

Neku looked at him for a second, shrugged, and took a snippet of the mystery meat. "Hmm...tastes like veal."

"Veal? Like veal cutlet?"

"Yeah."

"Who puts veal in ramen?"

"Ramen Guy, I guess." Neku suddenly froze. "Wait a minute...that's not veal...what IS that?"

Joshua and Neku stared at the strip of meat for a second before Josh let the thing slip back into his soup.

"Whatever it is," Joshua said suspiciously. "I'm not eating it. I'm going to get some miso ramen," he declared. "Or, maybe...Neku, do you still have some pins?"

Neku looked at him as if to say _of course, dummy_.

Joshua rocked back and forth. "You think you could...get me some...Absolute Shadow Ramen?"

Neku choked. "_HARGHFFN!_"

* * *

Joshua wound up unable to present his case effectively enough to get Neku to buy him some of the most expensive soup in the game. ("Maybe they'll give you some if you clean Pork City," Neku said.) So he settled for second-best. He had to crawl under the table and work his way around Neku's disgustingly huge purple boots, which were far inferior to his nice shoes, and then go track down Sho. He wasn't busing tables, so Joshua figured he must be in the kitchen. He tromped over and kind of let himself in, used to thinking that he owned Shibuya.

Sho must have jumped three feet when Josh reached up and boldly tapped him on the shoulder. "Wha-! How did you get in here?"

_No math puns? He must be seriously shocked. _Joshua jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the wide, unlocked door and smiled.

"O-Oh," said Sho. "You're not supposed to be back here, you brainless binomial."

"Still weak. And um, there's nobody waiting our table, so I figured I'd take my complaint straight to the brass."

"Why?"

"Because I'm a very important person." Joshua smirked and crossed his arms. "You might have even heard of me."

The look in Sho's golden eyes told of endless fantasies that involved ripping Joshua's skin off, castrating him with a rusty spoon, carving out his guts with an ice-cream scooper, and tossing him in a pit of boiling tar. Not necessarily in that order. "Go back and sit down."

"Normally, I would, but I have a problem," said Joshua, taking the smirk off and putting it back on its cushion. "You see, my shio ramen tastes weird."

Sho stared at him blankly.

Josh figured that meant he had not eaten the shio ramen lately, so he saw fit to explain. "The meat is unidentifiable, and it's affecting the whole soup with its strange taste. Are you not using jumbo chickens anymore, or...?"

"I-I don't make the shio," Sho stammered, gazing at our Joshua in wonder. "Mr. Doi does...but...nobody's ever had...a p-problem with it before..."

_Nobody? _"Did he make a recent change to the recipe? Have you started using meat from another supplier, or...?"

"Well," Sho said, still gawping. "Uh, a long time ago, he changed the recipe and started making special shio ramen...which is the only kind we give out, because that's what you like."

"_I_ don't like it," Joshua declared. "And I wouldn't be so untactful as to inquire about his secret recipes, but...do you know _how _he changed it, exactly?"

"No, just that...well, a bunch of Joshuas ganged up on him one night, and ever since, he's been making special shio ramen, which I don't know about. He says it's too...difficult for me to make. Which doesn't make sense," Sho added.

Joshua nodded. "I see...in that case, I would like to change my order. Could I have some miso ramen instead?"

Sho set his spoon down and rubbed his face, as if he were having trouble absorbing that last statement. "We don't...I..."

"If you don't have any, that's fine," Joshua said glumly. He sighed. "Could I have a bowl of...(ugh) shoyu, then?"

Sho stared at him for the longest time. And then he picked up a bowl of chukamen noodles, filled it with broth, and handed it to him.

"...It'll have to do. Thanks," Joshua said sadly, turning around and walking away.

Sho kept staring long after the boy's back had vanished through the double-doors.

"You there, math geek!" shouted Eiji from somewhere far off in the distance, balancing a stack of fifteen bowls on his head. "Quit standing around! Wrapping the rose of youth in a year's supply of Elmer's glue like tha—HEY! You're going to _burn the soup!_"

* * *

When our heroes left the Ramen Don, Joshua was feeling gross and Neku was feeling satisfied for the same reason – shoyu ramen. Joshua really didn't like that stuff so much; he wasn't that fond of soy sauce being the main flavor. Meanwhile, Neku thought it was the nectar of the gods. He was sorely mistaken, as Joshua was standing right next to him and thought it was anything but 'nectar.' More like watery bile. The nectar of the gods was crimson chili, anyway – Joshua thought everyone knew that, but apparently Neku was beyond help, as he only thought Definitivo Chili Dogs were 'not bad.' Baah. Stupid mortal.

Still in a bad mood from the whole ordeal, he was muttering crossly to himself."They didn't have miso! What kind of ramen joint doesn't have _miso!_"

"Let it go, Josh. Let it go," said Neku, still playing High N Low. Joshua had gotten him out of That horrible Bee's nightmarish world, and now he was back on track, blasting crabs to pieces. It was deceptively addicting, for a math game.

"Next time, you are getting me Absolute Shadow Ramen, no buts," Joshua remarked as they passed by Shadow Ramen, that fantasy world of delicious flava-flava and cheery not-Sho waiters. He beamed a look of deepest longing at the steaks and the people dancing on the tables, sniffling wistfully.

"Next time, we are getting hamburgers."

"...Can I have my phone back, now?"

They were continuing on their way to Pork City and the mysterious mysteries of strange mystery that were contained within. All was going well, when suddenly, it started to rain.

It wasn't like normal rain. It was more like a shimmery, golden mist. The droplets were large and round and honey-colored, like hunks of liquid topaz or something equally trite, but they fell in a slow, gauzy curtain. It was quite trippy. For a second, Joshua thought it was raining 10,000 yen pins, but then he remembered that those pins are made of metal and do not flutter weightlessly to the ground like so much feather pillow stuffing. He immediately lost interest, but Neku was entranced. _Of course_, thought Joshua. _Crows are easily distracted by shiny things. _And the rain was shiny indeed – all of the drops combined looked like a million golden butterflies, or a shimmering ocean flume, or like a bomb had been set off in a glitter factory. Anyway, it was sparkly and pretty and generally quite disgusting.

That's not what Neku was looking at, however. In all honesty, he could care less about the rain. He gave Joshua a little shove, smirking, and gestured grandly to the other Joshes walking around, which were suddenly much more interesting than the peculiar golden rain.

They were dancing.

"What. The. Hell?" Neku said, incredulous and trying to stifle a chuckle-fit with his fist at the same time. Let's just say that Joshuas, graceful though they may be, have two left feet when it comes to dancing – or perhaps too little feet. It's probably the nice shoes.

Our Joshua moaned and buried his face in his hands, very aware of his little problem.

Neku, on the other hand, was comfortable in his dancing ability, so his itty-bitty smirk wrenched itself into a huge grin that started to hurt his cheeks. Especially when all the Joshuas joined hands and started to sing. One half-broken voice plus another half-broken voice does not equal one normal voice – it equals two half-broken ones. Therefore, one half-broken voice multiplied by around six million people equals...six million half-broken voices.

Our Joshua moaned louder and tried to compact his feverish face into his skull with his palms, excruciatingly aware of his horrible transsexual voice box. (Apparently, his vocal cords wanted to belong to a woman. Joshua would. not. let. that. happen, hence the constant cracking as he tried heroically to suppress it with his puberty hormones of sputtering, fledgling manliness. Now that he would never age past pubescence, it had become an ongoing war that could only end in a draw, at best.)

To further rip open his festering wounds and pour salt noodles all over the exposed nerve endings, one of the Joshuas looked up from his boogie-down-ing and shouted, "HEY! HE'S _NOT DANCING!_"

There arose a clamor of enraged cries. Neku was paralyzed, trembling from the effort of not bursting into hog-like peals of laughter. Joshua was also paralyzed, albeit for very different reasons.

"He's not dancing?"

"WHA-AAT!"

"IF WE HAVE TO DANCE, SO DOES HE!"

"GET HIM!"

And our Joshua found himself yanked away from the wall he was desperately trying to melt into and dragged out mercilessly into the golden shimmery rainfall. He noticed with a note of disdain that it was pleasantly warm and almost ticklish. He noticed with a note of disdain how much he wanted to giggle when the rain hit him between the shoulder blades. He also noticed with an entire musical score of despair that Neku made no move to help him. Suddenly, Joshua found himself surrounded by a whorl of angry faces – his own face – shouting at him, spitting at him.

"Dance, you fool!"

"Do you want to be sacrificed?"

"In Pamela's name, you must dance!"

Our Joshua had no idea what to do. He felt like he was encased in a house of mirrors, only the reflections were dancing across the walls like colors in a kaleidoscope. This combined with the horrible smell of the rose-vines and the glitter falling everywhere was enough to overload his senses briefly and paralyze him. He looked over to Neku, widened his eyes to show the agony they contained, and mouthed, "_Help me..._"

Neku caught the look of raw, unblemished SOUL PAIN being beamed directly into his eye sockets. He must have, because he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted - "Don't piss off the plant goddess, Joshua! Dance! Shake it like ya mean it!"

So much for that.

Joshua took a deep breath, coughed wetly, and resigned himself to his fate - to be mercilessly humiliated over and over throughout the course of this godawful fanfiction until his sanity broke just as much as his voice. (The author would like to stress that they will try to make it up to Joshua in due time.)

"And Joshua would like to stress that the author can kindly _suck it_," snapped the poor boy, doing a sort of rocking back-and-forth-on-his-heels motion that was decidedly unsexy. His ears suddenly felt warm.

"Whoo! Go Joshua!" That was Neku, giving Joshua's wounds an epsom salt bath. Good ol' Neku.

Josh groaned, and kept on rocking back and forth. He hopped forward on his left foot, then kind of leaned back on his right, and then with a funny sort of skipping motion brought his right foot to the front, and repeated the process on the other side. After a few repetitions he got into a sort of groove, and had to stop thinking about his feet, and more about not getting bumped into by the Joshes, who were doing...er, different dance moves. Very, uh..._different_. Joshua decided to bite back the snark that was itching to come leaping out of his mouth, seeing as how he'd be insulting himself. (When you get tired of these terrible jokes, please bonk me and I shall stop.) He lurched away from a flailing arm and started inching backwards, trying to break free of the tight circle of Joshuas that had formed around him.

Alas, it was no good – his wrists were suddenly grabbed and, before he knew what was happening, he had been pulled out of his weird hop-dance and whisked away into a huge chain of Joshes who were apparently singing sacred hymns, such as "Ring Around the Rosie." Joshua inwardly begged for an assassination attempt by Sho, a falling piano, a freak plane crash, a nuclear bomb, an alien invasion...anything, ANYTHING that would put an end to the horror.

But his Proxy was watching. Joshua would not allow him the satisfaction of seeing him miserable, although it was probably too late; so he acted like he was enjoying it and made a big show of being the loudest, the boldest, the highest-kicker, the loudest-sneezer, and the surest of step, all the while smirking obnoxiously. He was crying on the inside.

"...ashes, ashes/We all fall DOWN!" shrieked the Joshuas in unison, and they broke away and went back to, er...freestyling. Joshua seized his chance and practically ran back to Neku's side, shuddering. Inwardly, of course. On the outside, he gave Neku a starry grin and suggested he try that sometime, woo.

Neku looked at him with such amusement barely contained behind his little grin that Joshua was worried his partner's face might explode. "You can't fool me, cream puff."

Joshua felt a frost giant of unexpectedness punch him in the gut, and he went staggering backwards. He had made that big show, but he'd been seen through? ...So he had basically made a fool of himself – for no reason? "Gya-HUH?"

Neku snickered. "It's still raining, deaaaar..."

Joshua felt something back in the crevices of his cerebrum go _ping!_ And his sanity went flying out the window. "THEN LET US DANCE."

And the pale sewer monster was finally unleashed. It stood there for a moment, blinking in the golden sunlight, unused to being out in the open. Normally, it was locked away in the misty canyons of Joshua's french gray matter. But not today. Today, it was Outside. _So this was what it's like_, it thought with a deep, satisfied breath. _The Outside._ The pale sewer monster took to the Outside clime fairly quickly – and a-HA, here were a pair of bony wrists just right for the grabbing! It quickly shackled them in its iron clutches – despite weak arms and legs, the boy's hands had a fairly strong grip – and proceeded to drag its prey out into the street. There was a party going on, it looked like. And the pale sewer monster was struck with the strangest desire to cause the vapid-looking monstrosity in his clutches to dance. The filthy, horrible pig-smelly in his hands must DANCE.

"Hey! What are you-" The pig-smelly started to protest, but the pale sewer monster bared its fangs and dug its nails into the captive's wrist flesh, effectively cutting off blood flow. The boy gasped - involuntarily, perhaps, who cared? - and the pale sewer monster discovered that he took great delight in causing him pain.

During its time locked up in the back of Joshua's skull, the pale sewer monster had plenty of time to research such things as the minuet and other partner dances. And practice them, so it was quite good at it too. However, the pale sewer monster was not used to wearing huge nice shoes, and so it "tripped" and "released" the boy "on accident." And by "released," we mean "threw," and by "on accident," we mean "on purpose." The "tripping" was standard tripping, only it was probably "on accident" too. They weren't teleported home – wouldn't THAT be the cop-out of the century – but the piggy was sent careening into the seething crowd of jigging Joshuas. Well, whatever. The end justifies the means.

And in any case, the pale sewer monster grew hungry for Mexican food. Specifically, NACHOOOOOS. There was a nacho bar in the back of Joshua's head reserved especially for it, and there were no chicks at this party, anyway. And so, the pale sewer monster returned to its comfy sofa in the depths of Joshua's head to watch wrestling tapes and eat nachos. The Outside was SO overrated.

Joshua lay there on the ground in a daze. He had blacked out for a minute there...hey? Where was...

"Neku!" shouted Joshua, leaping to his feet. In the heat of the moment, the Joshuas had seized the skinny boy and were flinging him high into the air, catching him, and tossing him back up again, as if he were nothing more than a limp ragdoll. It was very much like the end of Spy Kids. _How on earth did they get him that high? _Joshua just had to wonder as he watched in fascination, knowing that he himself could not throw a soccer ball more than three feet.

Neku was not pleased. "GET. ME. DOWN."

"Come join us!" shouted the Joshuas. "Join us in our dancing! It is raining! Why aren't you dancing? You must dance! You _must_!" Our Joshua was kind of tempted to rush into the crowd and help bounce Neku around like a superball.

But then, he was struck by a vision. It was a vision from Neku's point of view, watching from high in the air, as he, Joshua, ran into the crowd and suddenly vanished. As if he had melted into the hivemind, ushering in the loss of individuality and thought with open arms and a gleeful skip in his step. And for a fleeting moment, Joshua was convinced that if he helped these Joshes, his Soul would be sucked away into the roots of the mighty Pamela – no, the mighty weed infestation – and then they would never get home. He'd stay here, forever, doomed to subsist off of special shio ramen, tittering like a vapid schoolgirl while dragging a sobbing Neku around with him – or not, supposing they wound up sacrificing him or something. And he realized what that would mean - he would never be forgiven. He would never have a best friend, he would never be able to share his wrestling tapes, his pickup truck collection...which Mr. H might trash when he found it... And come to think of it, he would never see Mr. H again, he would never see his _fishes_ again, never never never...

And then Joshua realized that was really quite silly, but he was suddenly _scared, _all the same. And then he saw, in a brief moment of clarity, in the midst of a dust storm of glitter and cloying rose aroma – the bouncing had become frenzied and malicious, and it was almost nauseating to watch as Neku went up and down, up and down...the poor boy was screaming his head off, all reserve gone...and all the while, the rose-vines were shuddering and twitching, like pythons; the roses jerking around and swiveling like satellite dishes. A sudden premonition hit Joshua over the head – if those Joshes kept flinging Neku around, something terrible would happen.

Joshua grit his teeth, steeled his resolve, and suddenly, a Plan flickered into existence. "Don't worry, Neku," he murmured under his breath, quietly so that no nearby Joshes would hear him. "I'll get you down."

And he broke into a vicious sprint, running away, running faster than ever before.

* * *

**A/N:** Let's talk NOISE FORMS. Specifically, Joshua's.

So. The TWEWY community, ever since Noise of Regalement (totally awesome piece of work right there, but the ending was kinda frowny-face inducing), has decided that Joshua's Noise is a mink. He's kinda mink-y, yeah, but I think he's got to be a weasel. Why? Well, there are already chump Minks and a set of boss Minks. Plus, Joshua seems more _weaselly _to me, what with all of his sneakiness, his mischief, his little comments. The weasel Noise would be like a mink in its actions and navigation of the battlefield (aka it floats), but stockier and with bigger hind legs, and it would have three separate claws on its hands instead of one huge hooky-thingy. These claws would fuse into a singe scythe blade when he swiped, and instead of wind he'd be summoning junk and then hurling it at Neku & co. with a pulse of psychic energy. And it would have VIOLET TATTOOS ON ASHEN-GOLD FUR. And it would teleport, too – all good boss Noise teleport, right?

ALTERNATIVE: his Noise could be a moth. Now, hear me out on this one, 'cause it's kind of odd. So, moths are like drunken butterflies, right? They have erratic, unpredictable flight patterns, yet they always seem to get wherever they're going. Kind of reminds me of Joshua's gambit, which was all over the place IMHO. Also, moths are very fluffy and soft, with feathery feelers and wings. Like Joshua's hair. And the death's head hawkmoth symbolizes – you'll never guess it – DEATH, and this calls back to his place as king of the Shibuyan afterlife. As for what it would look like? Basically, like Joshua in his levitating position, minus the phone, because Noise don't have psychs. He'd also be kinda...naked, since Noise don't wear clothes either (Konishi, I'm looking at you) so why should he? So he'd be the same color as that time-attack feather, covered in purple tattoos, with big scythe claws on his hands and a lot of ribbon-y looking things that would twist around his legs, making them into kind of an abdomen thing. And big, lovely luna moth wings behind him (bcuz of the moon attack, ya?) and they would open only when he was harging up his JEEZUS BEEMZ attack, and also when he swiped his claws to make a wave of junk come at ya. I'm thinking his Noise battlefield would be like, Shibuya at night, with the moon behind his head. And every so often, he'd do a little motion thing that just looks like it's there for the whimsy of it, but then you notice that every time he does it, the moon gets a little bigger...and when he finally crashes it, you have to block/dodge/avoid like a tidal wave of stuff, and then you're back to how it was at the beginning of the fight. It'd be like, Let the Light Save You's demon cousin on steroids.

EVEN MORE ALTERNATIVELY: Suppose Joshua, being Composer and therefore very...uh, pure, would have no Noise of his own or be unable to become it? Maybe instead of his own Noise, he can combine with other Noise and superpower them up to mythical proportions? Like, he turned Anguis into Draco. He'd probably turn Cornix into like, some kind of fallen angel thing, or a gryphon, or manticore or something. And he'd turn sharks into Megalodons and sea serpents, and elephants into Behemoths, and jellies into Hydras or Medusas (geddit?). If he combined with a progfox, he'd turn into some kind of super-powered kitsune thing. Probably the thing that shows up when it uses that awful laser comet move. Only more Joshua-y.

The way they'd integrate that into the 'game' would be if one area in the Shibuya River had like, a violet Noise symbol in the middle, which would mean a Composer-bination. And sometimes you'd get Draco, too. But it would be randomized when you left the area and came back. And each fight would be hella tough. But easier than fighting the actual Composer himself, because the combination process would like, average the two power levels (for lack of a better term) out.

I dread to think of what would happen if he combined with a pig...wait...IF YOU DEFEATED JOSH THE PIG, YOU WOULD GET TWO PIN DROPS: FALL FROM THE HEAVENS AND HOLY LIGHT, BOTH FROM PEGASO or Pavo Real or something. And Neku would be able to JEEZUSH BEAMSH everything in his path! And if you used them while Josh was your partner JOSH WOULD START USING THE STARTER PINS. Like, one time, you would attack and little flaming meteors would come down instead of stuff, or he'd plug them with energy rounds, or that dramatic pose he makes at the end of each combo would launch a huge shockwave and stun the targeted enemies. Psychokinesis would be pretty much the same, only, he'd launch stuff from offscreen. And his jeezush beams attack would be replaced by HOLY LIGHTNING BOLTS, BATMAN!


	9. In which Cans are Thrown in Contest

_**JOSHUA TRIPS**_

CHAPTER NINE: IN WHICH NEKU AND JOSHUA HAVE A CAN-THROWING CONTEST

Summary: Neku and Josh are stuck here in an alternate dimension full of crazy loons. Searching for information has led them to investigate around Pork City, but on the way, Neku caused Joshua to briefly lose it and fling his partner into a crowd of dancing Joshuas. They grabbed him and now are bouncing him up and down. Big deal, you say, but Josh is apparently scared of THAT, too. So that makes blood, crabs, bees, spiders, bouncing Neku...Ahem. So Joshua ran off...

Rating: T for b-blood and all sorts of wonderful things like naughty words and all that jippity-jizzazz.

OF NOTE IN THIS CHAPTER: Joshua sweats. Later, he cheats at inane actions and decides to do something stupid. Neku is bounced. Ho-hum.

Genre: Parody/Adventure...I'm starting to think that putting this here is a little redundant.

* * *

Sho was not prepared when Pony-boycame crashing back into the kitchen unannounced – he jumped and dropped the bowl of ramen he was holding, but managed to catch it before it hit the floor and smashed into pieces. "What are you doing here?" Sho wanted to know.

"N-Neku! They've...raining..._ghuuuh_...got him...dancing...Pame...la..._hhuu_..." The peculiar Joshua leaned over, grasping his knees for support as he gasped for air. He sneezed violently (Sho almost dropped the bowl again) and nearly choked.

"Wh-whoa," Sho stammered, still a bit taken aback by this Joshua's strange tendency to come busting through doors without any warning. "Slow down, what's happening?"

"They've...they're...bouncing..._ugh_..." He went into a bout of slimy, horrible coughing, and almost collapsed. Sho lifted the bowl of ramen out of the blast radius and reached out to steady the Joshua, but he grabbed the counter on his own and hauled himself to his feet, refusing to fall. "Got to...help him..."

Sho had no idea what the problem was, but here's the kicker - Joshua was _sweating_. Yes, _sweating!_ In all likelihood, the apocalypse drew near. "Hey! I can't help if I don't know what's going on, hectopascal!" This was no time to be standing around, exchanging idle pleasantries, waiting for the Joshua to catch his breath, yadda yadda. If the kid was _sweating_, Hell was on his heels.

"By Shadow Ramen..." he wheezed. "They're...bouncing him...you've gotta..._hhuu_...help..."

That was all Sho needed. He ripped off the apron and started out the door, but the Joshua grabbed him by the coat.

"Take your gun..." croaked the Joshua, trembling all over. "Shoot it into the crowd..._hhuu_...and hide it...and then..."

"Got it," said Sho, and he tore himself away from Pony-boy's shaky grip. (He kept the gun in his pocket at all times.)

"You there! Just where do you think you're goin—huh?" Eiji caught sight of the Joshua for the first time, and he forgot all about chewing Sho out. The fifteen bowls on his head clinked noisly. Suddenly, a stab of fear jackknifed through his lower back as he realized something."Young man, are you...sweating?"

* * *

Meanwhile, back in the street by Shadow Ramen, shrouded in a thick mist of angry golden rain, Neku Sakuraba was having the time of his life. Kind of.

On one hand, the bouncing was really, really fun. At first, it had been a little jarring and kind of frightening, but now he was totally getting into it. On the other hand, the Joshes's eyes were growing black, and they were all grinning like gash-mouth N99. Every time he came down, their sharp nails would dig into his flesh – and then he would soar upward, into the honey-colored mist, and he would lose sight of anything but an endless fog of topaz. Then he'd come crashing back down again, into the nails and the eyes and the eerie grins, and they would launch him back into the thickening rain. They did this with such force that he couldn't help but scream his head off from the sheer adrenaline rush, but...

It was becoming sickening, almost. Like he was being lobbed higher, harder, and faster – and each time he came down, the Joshes were more and more messed up. Their grins were wider, their eyes were blacker...he only saw them briefly when he came down, but the brief glimpses were enough to send shudders up his spine. And that _bastard_...he'd _ditched_ him! He'd just run off back to the ramen place! What a goddamn CREAM PUFF!

"_Ring around the rosie/a pocket full of posies;/Ashes, ashes/we all fall down~!_" the Joshes sang all the while, their screeching comparable to nails being dragged down a blackboard.

"Stop! Stop! Put me down! Hey!" Neku yelled as they tossed him into the rain, faces appearing and vanishing in the haze of golden rain. "Please? H-Hey! Ow...!"

The Joshes emitted a low purring noise, like the whirr of a computer, or a machine – something cold, and unfeeling, hollow and soulless. It took him a second to realize they were all giggling in unison. Neku screamed louder as they threw him higher, leering at him in all directions – he felt sick – and their nails began to draw blood – he felt it, warm on his back, seeping out of the stinging cuts...

"Put me down! Put me down! That's enough—hey! HEY! It's not fun anymore...!" Neku wailed. They were hurting...their hands, like talons...

"_Ring around the rosie/a pocket full of posies;/Ashes, ashes/we all FALL DOWN~!_"

"Please!" Neku shrieked. The song rose in a horrible, discordant wail all around him; a crescendo of broken sing-song and the screaming of birds of prey, piercing through his headphones, filling his ears and raking its bloody claws down the sides of his brain...

"_Ring around the rosie/we offer you this posie;/Eat his ashes/watch him_ FALL DOWN!"

The realization pierced him numbly through the diaphragm mid-flight. They were going to drop him, weren't they? They were going to toss him again, and they weren't going to catch him, weren't they? They'd just let him fall fifteen feet into the concrete, like that? Neku fell into their cutting embrace with a scream, flailing, thrashing around in a futile attempt at (BANG!) release before they threw him again.

Only, they didn't. They dropped him on the ground with an unceremonious thud, yes, but the fall was hardly lethal – a few inches at most.

As it happened, Neku hit his head hard on the concrete (in the same spot as the lamp-bonk and related incidents) and his vision went hazy for a second. But it snapped back into focus after a blink or two, and Neku attempted to sit up. Bad idea – his skull throbbed in protest and he quickly laid down. Even so, he could see the Joshes scattering in all directions.

In minutes, the rain ceased.

* * *

As soon as he had his land legs back, our Joshua was out the door after Sho. He heard a bang just as he cleared the threshold of the Ramen Don, a jarring snap that could only be a gunshot going off. He clutched the stitch in his side and slumped down, smiling feebly despite the horrid headache and all the hot sinus inaction going on.

Quickly, he untied his hair and shoved the scrunchie in his pocket, just in case any of the Joshes outside tried to recognize him, and stumbled back into the Ramen Don.

Which, I might remind you, was full of Joshes.

"We saw that, you know," said a familiarly unhelpful transsexual voice box to his upper left.

Joshua snapped his head up and glared at one of his many doppelgangers, sticking his tongue out. "Bleh!" The Joshua recoiled as if stung, almost as if a juvenile insult like that was more powerful than a snappy comeback. It probably was, since witty retorts are a dime-a-dozen in Joshua Land.

"Why would you do that?" inquired a Joshua, leaning over the back of a booth.

"Do what? Bleh?"

"Save a Neku like you did," said another, seated near the window.

Joshua wiped his nose and thought it was best to lie. "...I claimed him."

"Ah," said the rest of the restaurant. Minus the Nekus, of course, who all looked slightly frightened, but didn't say a word.

"But why? Even a claimed Neku isn't worth going out in a Dance – they're free game when it's raining, you know."

"Ehh...freshie." Joshua shrugged, hoping that would suffice as an explanation.

"Ah," said the rest of the restaurant, slightly disdainfully. Minus the Nekus, of course, who were starting to seem like they didn't talk much at all.

"Didn't you read your phone, freshie?" sneered a Joshua or two in the back.

"Neku stole it," was our Joshua's reply. Which was kind of true.

"Before you read the Rules? By _Pamela_, you freshies get dumber every day..."

And so, the attention broke off of him and slowly fragmented until he had dissolved into the background and was forgotten. Most of the time, Joshua loved being the center of such attention, but now was not one of those times. Josh decided to wait by the door until Sho came back, and it would look like he was just walking out of Ramen Don. He was counting on the zebra effect to keep him safe, here. The Joshuas inside the Don didn't seem very likely to sell him out – they looked apathetic, at best. Well, whatever. Joshua scooted over and got in line for a table again, fiddling with his lucky lightning bolt.

He didn't have to wait long. Our Joshua was soon greeted by a haggard-looking Sho Minamimoto shoving his way into the Ramen Don. He glanced at Joshua briefly, and Josh saw there was a raw, primal sort of fear in his eyes, mixed with liberal amounts of hatred and perhaps an ounce of wonder at why he'd even help a Joshua in the first place. Their eyes held contact briefly, and then Sho ran off into the kitchen as fast as he could.

Not too long after that, Joshua was brusquely shoved out of the way by a knot of clones who came bursting through the door after him. "I heard a gun! Where'd that guy go? _I heard a gun!_"

Our Joshua would have stayed, but that seemed a little stupid of an idea – since Sho had a gun, and a whole kitchen full of cooks who would defend him, and our Joshua was a tiny waif with a head cold. There was also the tiny matter of the gun in HIS pocket, which would probably not spell a happy ending for him and Neku if it was discovered. Joshua got the impression that the clones weren't allowed firearms, otherwise Shibuya would have been converted into a shooting range by now. And plus, he needed to find Neku. Quickly. Before they got lost. With that satisfying his conscious, our Joshua slipped out the door as discreetly as possible. Nobody noticed, or if they did, nobody cared.

* * *

Once he was outside, Joshua noticed that the rain had stopped. He ran – ugh, more of this _running_ - out to the curb and stared down the street, and there was Neku – sprawled out on the pavement, unmoving. Joshua's heart gave a funny lurch – was he dead? Did Sho shoot him? Wha—_no. No, let's be calm here. _Joshua knew very well that he would be up to his nose in deep shit if Neku died while he was in charge of him – in an alternate universe where he wasn't Composer, to boot. He had every reason to be freaking out right now, but he didn't. He remained deathly calm and decided to go check if Neku was unconscious. That seemed a logical first step.

So Joshua jogged up to Neku's prostrate form as quickly as he could without falling apart at the seams. As he approached, some of the ice left his stomach – good, he was breathing. But – there was blood! There was a little bit of blood trickling out, nothing major, but to Joshua it might as well have been a huge puddle of organs all over his back. Joshua stuffed his fingers in his mouth and ran over to Neku's side.

"Neku! Neku!"

Neku's eyes fluttered open and he squeaked fearfully at the sight of Joshua looming over his face. Joshua sighed and pulled the scrunchie out of his pocket, tying his hair back. "It's me, blockhead."

"Oh," said Neku. "My head hurts."

"Is your back okay? Is anything broken?"

"They didn't drop me, no thanks to your creamy puffiness," Neku said, with some difficulty. "There was a...gunshot, I think. They set me down, kinda, and ran off. ...I think."

"No thanks to me? Who has the gun here?" ...And in case any Joshuas were listening... "Who went and got him?"

"...Oh." Neku clucked his tongue. "Probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, you know. What if the bullet hit me?"

"It didn't, and that's the important thing," Joshua sighed as he helped hoist Neku into a sitting position. Truth be told, he hadn't considered that, but he was used to not considering that – when you control who lives and who doesn't, who cares if you hit a few bystanders? Sure, resurrecting each one and wiping their memories was one heck of a hassle, but still...you can't really blame him. This is not to say he was irresponsible about his gun – he only shot emo kids and assassins. That was his policy.

He was just used to working with a pretty wide margin of error, and kept forgetting that the margin was cleaved away in an alternate dimension, much to his annoyance – but he was only fifteen, after all, so some fluffiness here and there was permissible. But of course, Neku was not to know that Joshua was a little kid who didn't have any idea of what he was doing – Neku was to remain under the impression that he was in the hands of an experienced demigod. Otherwise, there'd probably be a mutiny, since Neku was pretty opposed to Joshua being "in charge" as it was.

The orange-haired one expressed noises of discomfort, rubbing the back of his head, which looked (and felt) like it couldn't decide – should it swell up into a giant goose egg, or just cave in completely?

"Ah, that's better," said Neku. "Ow." He was somewhat acquainted with Joshua's cockiness, and personally thought one of Joshua's crazy gambits was long due to blow up in his face. He just hoped it wouldn't be this one.

There was a moment of silence between the two. The Joshes were still running around in confusion, like headless chickens. Albino fluffy prairie chickens. They ignored the two sitting in the middle of the road, more focused on saving their skins from whoever had gotten their hands on a weapon.

"_You're bleeding_," Joshua finally blurted out, making a most peculiar face.

"Yes, I am." Neku winced, poking the goose egg that was rapidly bursting out of his skull – apparently, his head had made a decision. He noticed Joshua staring at his back as if it were smeared with mutilated kittens. "What's the matter? A guy can bleed, can't he?"

"Blood means injury," said Joshua after a second of staring at the rust-colored spots bleeding through the back of Neku's shirt. Thin red streams trickled down his back. "That could mean your death, which would mean bad things for poor me. Of course I'm unsettled by the presence - the implications – the – the blood..."

"Oh, sure." Neku rubbed his back, wincing. "You're a total wuss, man."

Joshua sniffled, indignant. "So...you're not hurt?"

"Not too badly," said Neku. "Ouch...I think they cut me up a little bit..."

"No irreparable damage?"

"NO, okay? I'm fine!" Neku turned around to glare at his partner, who was still tittering to himself over the scarlet spots soaking into the asphalt. "Since when do _you_ care if I'm dead or not?"

"Ever since I lost control of the ability to decide that," Joshua retorted, staring at the blood spots and flaring his nostrils slightly.

Now, about this blood thing.

Joshua had never really engaged in active vampirism, so to speak, but blood had never really bothered him before. But you see, Joshua had read Rhyme Over Reason one day, just for kicks. And he had been all "Hee, hee, hemophobia, that'll never happen to ME! HEE HEE HEEsupermask." That night, Joshua had spent half an hour or so imagining situations that would cause him to have hemophobia, had a good giggle, and went off to bed. Suddenly, his sleep was bombarded by _inexplicable nightmares _about being trapped in a world of white ice cream and black sky. This would not be so bad, if not for the giant, bloated monster that stood in the middle of it all. It was covered in mouths and hands, with a pair of scarlet, reptilian eyes that wept thick, milky tears. The monster's mouths - all feminine, smiling and covered in scabs - vomited gushing rivers of semi-coagulated blood; they choked out black, clotted masses and wads of engorged arteries - thick as coiled rope - and torrents of still-beating hearts and gluey clumps that _turned into hands and grabbed him and pulled him in _-

For a few days after that, Joshua avoided Rhyme, reason, the color red, and pretty much anything that started with the letter R. Including rest – he took up insomnia for a while, scared out of his mind by the BLOOD MONSTER, which would apparently appear if he turned the lights off or let his feet touch the floor. He entertained himself through the wee hours of the morning by crouching and scooting around on a roly-chair, twiddling with his curls, and playing with his trucks like crazy. With the lights on of course. But the instant he started calling his lamp 'Light-kun' and began accusing it of mass murder, Mr. H dragged him off to the doctor's. Therapy ensued!

The nightmares went away. Mostly. Every now and again the monster would come back and spook him – but he just did what the psychiatrist said and pictured it vomiting butterscotch syrup for his ice cream island instead. Maybe some sprinkles, too. Mmmmmmmm. Paradise.

He had a brief mental image of the blood tricklies running down Neku's back turning into arms, grabbing his face, and pulling him into the cuts, which in Joshua's melodramatic daymares were more like infected, festering gashes. N-no thank you. Joshua shuddered and helped Neku get to his feet.

Speaking of Neku...he was wondering why he kept going off at Joshua today. The chicken-head hadn't done anything wrong – at least, not yet. He sighed, and turned to face Joshua. "Okay, dude...I'm sorry, I keep getting all irritated for no reason and...it's...I'm sorry, okay?"

"It's fine," Joshua muttered, distracted by thoughts of adhesive medical strips. "We cool."

More Beatisms? Neku made a mental note to check if Beat had been spending any time with the 'Puff lately. "Okay, if you say so..." Neku shook his hair out of his eyes and licked the rain off his lips, which he was surprised to find not only_ looked _like honey, but_ tasted_ like honey, too. Hey...waitaminnit...!

"Neku! Quit...licking yourself!"

"Huh? Oh, sorry." Neku quickly set his leg back down.

Joshua looked at Neku as if he were an dog; a dog that had just peed all over the statue of Hachiko, and after a few seconds of utter silence, someone looked up and said, "Ain't that _your_ dog, Yoshiya?" He covered his face with his hands and moaned, "Come ON, Neku...let's just...let's just get going, okay? We're drawing attention to ourselves..."

_Huh, like we weren't before_, Neku thought, and threw up his hands. "Sure, sure. _Let's go_."

* * *

Our Joshua needn't have worried his pretty little head. Once the rain had ended, the Joshuas had completely lost interest in Neku. They were _still_ running all over the place, hiding under cars and flinging themselves into the bushes, then coming out and shouting "OH, DEAR." Apparently, the Joshes of this world were scared of getting shot. That was understandable, because most people are. "Most" being "all without blue mary-sue force fields of holy doom." They were more preoccupied with shoving each other out of the way and trying to decide between shielding or shoving their Nekus. Most Nekus were getting shoved, and the ones that weren't were contributing to the shoving. There were a lot of corny speeches being thrown around, and a lot of soulful grunting, and the air was buzzing with a general feeling of confusion that would die down in a few minutes. A few minutes was all our heroes needed to slip away, unnoticed. So they did.

Pork City was one minute away from 104, so they were at their destination within seconds. And there, the two of them blundered right into into their next obstacle.

"There's no door!" Neku exclaimed, after running a lap around the building to check for any entry points.

Joshua was fed up with movement, having exceeded his calorie burnage quota for the day; so, he had been resting on one of the resort benches, enjoying an icy green tea from a vending machine while he tried to fan his hair out. "Not one?"

"Well, there's_ one_. Where we came out. But you can't get _in_ that way, it's locked from the inside...ooh, did you get me a drink?"

"Nope, I bought this soda for the pigeons."

"Aww, dude, that's so sweet of you. You're just like my grandma! Same hair, same shoes, same freaky pigeon fetish..."

"If you're wise," Joshua said softly over the rim of his tea-can. "You'll go back to talking about doors now."

After a second, Neku remembered that he had the phone in his pocket, and also the fact that Joshua was pretty much powerless here, in any case. Safe. And so, Neku crawled out from under the bench, picked up the soda, and plonked down next to the still-sweaty corpse kid, feeling a bit bold today. (...Don't try this at home, kiddos.) "Whatever. So, there's no doors, no windows...nothing."

Joshua fingered his chin thoughtfully. "Well, the winners of this Game have to get in somehow."

"I guess so," Neku sighed. He couldn't stay frowning for long, though – Joshua had gotten him one of those really sweet sodas where you have to smack the top to make the marble fall into the bottleneck. It is scientifically impossible to not grin when drinking one of these sodas. Seriously, they've got like, happiness serum in there, or something. Neku worked out his angst by bonking the top of his Ramune – the marble went CLINK and suddenly he was all smiles. Even if he didn't care for sweet things, in general. It was just so...CLINK. Hehe.

Joshua was studying the sides of Pork City intently, swirling his can as if he were about to perform divination with the dregs. Not that they put the dregs in ice tea cans, but anyway. "Say," he mumbled after a minute. "What do you think those gray slots are?"

"Those things?" Neku shrugged and slammed down half of his sugar-sweet happiness serum soda. "_Gaahrgh_—_I can feel my enamel dissolving_—uh, they're vents or something."

Indeed – smoke was coming out of the slots. But something interesting about the smoke – it seemed to vanish before it really got out into the atmosphere. "Vents, hm?"

"That's what I said."

Joshua nodded slowly. "Interesting..."

Neku drank the rest of his soda in measured gulps like normal people do, and when he was finished with the thing, he chucked it as far as he could. The soda bottle flew a good ways, then came down and hit some random Joshua in the face - he fell over and didn't get up. "...Sweet," Neku muttered as he sized up the distance in his head. That had to be like, twenty feet. Niice.

Joshua crushed his empty can under his foot, wordlessly eying Neku's throw himself. Twenty feet, then. Not bad, for a mortal. Josh squinted, silently scanning the scattered groups of clones for a target...ah, _bingo_...

Neku was in the middle of admiring his awesome throw when his calf was nudged by a nice shoe. He looked up just in time to see Joshua launch his crumpled-up can into the sky. The piece of metal hurtled at inordinate speeds through the sky, glinting in the sunlight, until it finally came down thirty feet away and struck a Neku on the head. It struck at such an angle that it bounced off of the Neku's orange crest and was airborne again, arcing over another whole ten feet until it smacked into another Neku's face, went ricocheting off, hit another in the ear, and another, and another...until every Neku in sight had been bonked. Finally, as the last one sunk to his knees, the can fell off his head and landed in his collar, a rather roundabout three-point shot - sunk after casually bonking every player on the opposing team.

Neku smelled a rat.

He glared at Joshua, who up until this point had been watching the can's progress with a bemused air. "Hmmm! Now, what are the odds of_ that_?"

"I'd say pretty in your favor, Mr. Psychic Phone," Neku grumbled.

"I don't know what you're talking about." Joshua yawned, stretched, and got off the bench. "Whelp, I'd say it's about time to go check out Pork City, wouldn't you?"

Neku was understandably pissed at the casual way Joshua bent reality to win a can-throwing contest. It was like his phone was an action replay for Real Life. Now, if only he could figure out how to work it... "Oh, I suppose _you_ could just phase through the walls like an apparition and check it out, couldn't you?"

"I can't use my powers here. I thought we'd established this already." Joshua sighed dismally, as if he had _such high hopes_ for Neku and the orangehead was a constant disappointment.

"Suuure," Neku grumbled. "Whatever. How do you propose we get in?"

Joshua smirked. "I propose you follow me."

Neku rolled his eyes, but he trotted after his partner anyway. He remembered the six hours of puttering around and general pointlessness that had resulted the _last _time he followed Joshua's propositions, back in the shadows of time when they had been Players. But he couldn't really do much about it, now could he? Besides, Joshua looked like he actually knew where he was going, this time. Shocking. "Lead on, good fellow. Lead on."

* * *

The cosmic fluffhead's idea soon became painfully apparent as they approached the blank walls of Pork City, but Neku didn't say anything. Maybe – maybe he was just jumping to conclusions, maybe – Josh was a fluffhead, beyond a shadow of a doubt – but was he really that far gone into his fluffy-headedness? Did truly no hope remain for his cream-puffy soul? Surely – surely he wasn't going to suggest – he was a prissy kid! Prissy kids just don't DO that! They don't suggest things like – like – well, maybe not, he _was_ pretty attached to those nice shoes, after all - and if he wasn't, then Neku wouldn't be the one to give him the idea.

As the two of them neared the wall, Joshua began visibly sizing up the vents. They were about five feet off the ground, for one thing – but that was easily remedied, since each vent was choked with thick black nets of ropy vines. Another thing about the vents were the streams of smoke issuing from the darkness. Smoke that, after getting past the plants and entering the strange golden lighting, looked very pale and shimmery, like essence of Josh hair. _Perhaps the plants act as some kind of filter?_ Joshua wondered, eying a shriveled rosebud that twitched ever so slightly. Whatever the case, they hadn't been cleaned in ages, either – Josh reached up and ran his fingers over the base of the closest vent, noting the streaks left behind in the...ashen...goldish...er, the soot. "...It'll have to do," he mumbled, examining the residue on his fingertips with disapproval.

"No way," blurted Neku, as his fears were suddenly confirmed. He was quite opposed to this ridiculous idea, and equally determined to prevent the next phase of Joshua's 'plan' from ever being implemented. Ever. "We are NOT going in the vent. The—what if there's a big thing of boiling water at the bottom? Or maybe a furnace, or a melting coal bin, or a huge turbine, or a bonfire or a steam engine or a dragon-"

Joshua sighed. "Do you have any better ideas? If so, I'd love to hear them." After all, it wasn't like he was looking forward to jumping into a smoky chute.

"Maybe we could climb up the sides...? With, uh...a grappling hook? Or a...a...we could use those vines! Or heap a whole bunch of...stuff...together...and climb up! And we'd get in through the elevator and..."

The Composer patted his Proxy on the head as if he were a puppy. "I'm sorry, Nekkun, but that will never work. For one thing...take a look at yourself. Take a good, long look. Do you honestly think you could throw a heavy grappling hook all the way to the top of Pork City, let alone climb it? Keep trying."

"Uh - we - we - don't _pat_ me, dude...rrgh, dammit, why do you always have to be RIGHT?" Neku gave up the ghost, crossing his arms and blasting one of those icy death glares at the vent. _If only there were more Nekus in my world_, Joshua thought serenely as he watched the thin lines of frost begin to collect. _Global warming would be out the window._

"Don't worry, Neku. We'll find one that's not smoking."

Neku ground his teeth. "Suppose we discover, halfway down a vertical shaft, that the damn thing's been closed?"

"You don't have to come, if you don't want to."

Tangerine was a bit surprised by that. He raised an eyebrow, cautiously incredulous. "...Really?"

Joshua nodded, a very martyr-like air coming over him. "You can stay out here and watch for any...company."

"Huh! You're being nice!" Neku poked him in the gut. "Don't tell me you're going soft!"

"...Or I could shove you down the shaft and let you break my fall. Which would you prefer?" Joshua shrugged, as if it didn't matter to him. (Truthfully, he'd rather have some company if he was to go hurtling down a metal shaft into the unknown. Which probably wasn't the best idea. Still, they couldn't see any better ones.)

"I'll stand guard," Neku said quickly, backing away from the vent.

"Good boy." Joshua patted him on the head again. Neku retaliated by horizontally bonking him in the stomach, which was squishy enough to be labeled grade-A poking material. Joshua _almost _started a wrestling match redux, but his fluffiness only goes so far. "Stop, stop! We can work out our hormonal angst at the motel!"

He meant with another one of them Midnight Adventures. But as soon as the words were out, the alternate reading poked him in the eye with a flashing neon finger. He would have smacked his forehead, but Neku was a sweetheart and did it for him. "CREAM PUFF."

"Ouch—yeah, I probably deserved that, hm?" Joshua grumbled. "...Good granola grappling hook, I hate it when that happens..."

"You mean you don't say creepy stuff like that on purpose?" Neku said, sounding relieved.

"Now, I didn't say that." Joshua didn't want to lose his mysterious aura just yet. You know you're really grasping at straws when your mysterious aura comes from saying vaguely suggestive things and giggling, but seriously, a short, girly blonde kid just isn't all that impressive – however, Joshua wasnot one to let circumstances get him down. He couldn't help the way he looked, and he couldn't help what you thought of him, but if he poked in just the right way, here and there...he left you wondering. About him. And by virtue of that, thinking of him. And by virtue of that, nobody was really liable to _forget_ about him. As long as he stayed a mystery – even if it was on something as stupid as his sexual orientation, which didn't really matter in the scheme of things – then he still had a shot at getting friends.

You see, in Joshua's world, you couldn't really hope for much more than recognition. Unless you had been his buddy for a long time, and were an adult, and knew that kids were kind of bizarre creatures prone to fluffheadedness, and weren't likely to punch his lights out if he annoyed you, and – oh hell, if you weren't Mr. Hanekoma, you didn't really go out of your way to visit Joshua all that much.

As it was, Josh only had contact with sleazy old men who lived off of coffee and Michael Jackson music videos. If he left the sewer, none of the Reapers could really perceive his Composer form – except for Koki Kariya, who kept a running commentary on the phantom fog beast that sometimes ate Uzuki's salt noodles when she wasn't looking – and so his only option was to try and talk to them in Boy mode, which either got him labeled a Player or a stupid little kid, neither of which were taken seriously.

It was a great fear of Joshua's that he'd be completely forgotten by everyone he'd ever known, ever made an impression on, although he'd never admit to it. He honestly didn't care what people thought of him – as long as they remembered him, he could talk to them, right? Even if Beat wondered about Joshua only once a week when Neku played his Friday mind games with HT Masuoka (what a meaner, that Nekky, harassing poor lovesick waifs for kicks), didn't that mean that Beat would still remember him as the Composer? Or even as that-prissy-kid-you-was-with? That was better than nothing, right?

Joshua was a big supporter of backwards logic.

Neku was not. But he knew what to do. He sighed, and shrugged. "You shouldn't be so vague... They won't ask you out until they're sure, you know."

All internal angsting went out the window. "Who?"

Neku shrugged again.

The deep complex fluff of Joshua's plans was lost on practical people like Neku Sakuraba, who were more direct about things. Neku, you'll remember, had pacted with Joshua, and even though you can send two people to opposite sides of the planet, and even though you can be stretched between several layers of alternate reality, and even though you can want to sever your ties so much it hurts, you cannot break a pact. You will always have a piece of your partner inside, like a little fragment of their soul in yours, and a strong bond between you. Neku and Beat went out to harass young children every Friday, such was their communion of mutual delinquency, and Neku and Shiki were always going to be close friends, if not more. It stood to reason that Neku and Joshua would always have some kind of connection – maybe as rivals, maybe as friends. Maybe as nothing at all.

But the pact and the sync rate combined allow one to briefly acquire the partner's mindset – much like asking yourself WWJD: What Would Joshua Do? You'd always get a clear answer, regardless of cream puff quotient or stupideous skater slang or even the mysterious beast that is the female thought process. Kind of like a mind probe. (You see why trusting your partner is a big deal?)

So, therefore, Neku knew what could make Joshua tick. When you know how a mind works, it's surprisingly easy to figure out things like that – what bothers someone, what interests someone, how they see certain things. Neku and Joshua were very similar in some ways, and very different in others. But the _key_ difference between Neku and Joshua was that, while Neku built walls, Joshua grew corn mazes. Neku would go as the crow flies, but Joshua would take the scenic route. Neku liked things plain, get-it-over-with; he liked having something to show for his work. Joshua, meanwhile, was all about the experience. Neku wore durable sporty stuff from J to the M, and Joshua was a bitch to prissy DC dress shoes. Neku could not understand why anyone would want to touch butterscotch with a ten-foot-pole, or make things more difficult than they needed to be, but Joshua ate butterscotch-swirl ice cream every night and spoke as eloquently as he could around people like Beat. Neku referred to this phenomenon, this Joshua's-complicating-of-everything, as fluffiness.

Rather than diving into the convoluted, labyrinthine folds of Josh's french gray matter on a futile quest to _understand_ every time he detected fluffiness, Neku would take the very existence of the maze as proof that he was right about the presence of some difficult issue. Shiki had used the same strategy on him, more than once. And it worked. If Joshua was going to dance around something, well...either he was just playing with you, or he was trying to stay mysterious and ethereal and strange. Like a bizarre Composer complex of some sort – that if he was humanized, he'd lose his power. That was the gist of it, anyway. Neku didn't let on about this theory of his, but he figured Joshua knew about it, and he also figured Joshua had a "method" for him, too.

That said, Neku thought the whole thing was stupid. Understanding other people was impossible, yeah, if you MADE it so. Why on earth would you want to make things all twisted up, when they could just as easily be done without a whole gambit stringing you along from place to place? It was...unfathomable, really. (What Neku didn't realize was that _his_ mind was just as weird and alien to Joshua. A mind is only truly comfortable with itself, you know.)

...Anyway. Despite all that, having a chunk of your partner's Soul integrated into yours had some...interesting side affects. For one thing, Neku found his preachy speechy condititon had spread to his partners – at least once during each week in the game, someone had made a long tirade about something or other. (Joshua had about six of them. One was about fishy stuff, one was about Uwada Dogen, one was about the origins of the Moai, one was about understanding people...the list drags on.) Now, Neku had always been hardcore, but he found himself caring about rules a lot less now – and he was a lot more conscious of his image – and, most annoying of all, he would occasionally slip into a state of mind that loudly demanded fluffiness and toying with people. Sometimes he'd just...flip his hair, subconsciously, or chuckle a little too lightly when someone said something stupid, or maybe go mess with HT's poor brain, or say something of "relative innocence" to Shiki just to see if she'd blush or-

Neku was greatly annoyed after he came off of it – it was so unlike him – but he wasn't above invoking it in certain situations. Such as dealing with Joshua, since his reactions were always twice as priceless when he got nailed. Even so, he was taking a bit of a gamble here, since he didn't really know whatever the hell turned Joshua on (and frankly, he _reeeaaaally_ didn't want to), and was assuming that the teasing was just teasing. For, uh, "priceless expressions." If it was on purpose. Or not. Or whatever. See what I mean? Fluffiness was so annoying!

He wasn't exactly right on his gambling, in any case, but he hit the mark anyway. "Who, Neku?"

"Is it really my place to tell you?" Neku scratched behind his head and put on an air of nonchalance.

Joshua crossed his arms and whipped out that my-son-just-tracked-mud-on-the-kitchen-floor look. Oh, Neku was positively _shaking_ in his boots. "I think it is," he snipped.

Neku resisted the urge to chuckle lightly. "Hrmmm... I'm sure they wouldn't appreciate that..."

"Tell me who it is, and she'll be very glad."

"Will she? Will she really?" Neku smiiiirkked. "...How do you know she's even a she?"

Joshua noticed his cover was blown, his mystery knocked down a few notches. He floundered about mentally, launching a painfully futile attempt to reclaim it. "Hmph. M-Maybe I'm bi."

Hogwash. Utter hogwash. Words could not properly describe the hogginess of this wash. "Maybe she's ugly."

"Maybe you could tell me who she is and I could decide for myself, hm?"

"Mayyybe..."

"_Neku_..."

"...But wouldn't you rather find out yourself? If I recall properly, it's more _fun_ with a little suspense."

"...Neku! Ugh, you are _impossible!_"

The light chuckle broke free at last. "Hehe..."

Joshua huffed angrily, and poked Neku in the forehead, much like Eri. That caught Neku off guard, to say the least. "Hilarious. Let's find a vent that's not smokinating."

"Uwee hee?"

Joshua was already stomping off to look for busted vents. Neku waited a second, chuckling to himself – that kid was such a sissy – before he joined up with him. As it was, he had to run to catch up to his partner, who still looked pretty miffed. Neku patted him on the shoulder, and he let rip a thunderous "HMPH."

"Chill, dude," said Neku, grinning from the marvelous euphoria that came whenever he succeeded at bothering Joshua. "No biggie, right?"

"I _am _chill," Joshua said stiffly.

"Tch. And I'm the queen of England."

"Naturally, Your Majesty," Joshua crowed suddenly, bowing in a way that radiated the essence of Miles Edgeworth, legendary prosecutor and dandy extraordinaire.

Neku rolled his eyes. Josh seemed to have recovered nicely. And then... "Heeey, is that a busted vent?"

"How...suspiciously convenient," murmured Joshua, delicately brushing Neku's hand off his shoulder. Indeed, there was a vent that was not letting loose strangely clean puffs of smoke. It wasn't letting loose anything at all. The vines around the opening looked rather greenish compared to the other ones, which seemed like a good indicator that the vent had been out of commission for some time. And yet, nobody bothered to fix it? How odd. Joshua was beginning to notice a pattern.

Neku stuffed his hands in his pockets and inspected the vent. "Yeah, well...when life gives you lemonade, don't complain, I guess?"

"I suppose so," said Joshua, climbing up on the vines and peeking down the metal slot curiously. He examined the shaft carefully – it seemed to hook sharply downwards and continue for a ways down, far enough that he couldn't well make out the bottom. Bother.

"Hey, you sure about this?" Neku glanced at his partner, a little concerned. "I just had a thought - there could be a vat of boiling water down there...only without the water...or something..."

Joshua had not thought about that. And although the thought of frying alive on a great sheet of burning metal was not exactly comfortable, he couldn't let himself start worrying. This was the only lead they had, after all. If Joshua didn't have enough information – if they missed something crucial – there could be a deus ex machina somewhere in this building, some hidden stash of phlebotinum just aching to be put in his hands – Joshua hadn't lost his Composer powers, after all, they were just suppressed – and his clairvoyance was prickling at the back of his forehead, like it always did when he was close to something of great importance – anyway, if there was something so important here, and they missed it...well... "There could also be a kingdom of mushroom people and a princess in need of saving. I'll take my chances."

"Okay," said Neku, not sounding okay at all. "Just...be careful, alright? Don't get the wrong idea, dude – if you get baked into cream puff supreme because you went jumping into some vent, I'm sunk."

"Don't worry, Nekky-pants. You're just overreacting." Joshua swung his feet over the edge of the vent, so that they were dangling into empty space and all that was keeping him from plummeting into the darkness was his seat on the rim.

"Yeah, and you're underreacting. Josh, I really, _really_ don't think this is a good idea, please get your feet out of there and let's_ think_ about this – Josh! JOSH!"

Before he could be persuaded not to do it, by either his conscience or Neku's naggery, Joshua sucked in a deep breath and slid forward.

* * *

**A/N:** Gads, that took forever. It kept slipping into melodrama, despite my best efforts, and it might still be a bit too gooey to be palatable. Meh.

Now time for Noise forms, Neku version! General consensus around these parts seems to be that Neku's a wolf, thanks to the delightfully influential Light's Refrain and assorted parties. I haven't really seen any other interpretations, to be perfectly honest with you. And being a wolf does suit him quite a bit, since he's the lone wolf and all that, but...well, I'm biased against werewolves. Thank you, Twilight, for pissing on the mythos. God. Besides, although I can easily picture Neku as a wolf, it just seems a little...hm. I don't know. Wolves are kinda...eh. They're like...ravens. And dragons. …Yeah. There's already a bunch of wolf Noise as it is, I like to picture the characters as unique species. Yes, that's it. See, all of the other character Noise were completely unique (with the exception of Draco, but you know, he became Oorochi or something like that. A multi-headed Oriental serpent dragon. Quite different than the other dragons – actually, now that I think about it, they were wyverns, so it's okay.) So then, if not a wolf, what is Neku? Neku is...well, let's look at his personality. He's direct, blunt, to-the-point, with a strongly defined morals system and a unique habit of giving peculiar motivational speeches like a total sap, even though he hates sappiness. He's a badass, no doubt about it, and he has this weird thing for being cool. So...what kind of animal is so no-nonsense as Neku Sakuraba?

I'm thinking...he's either a cat, a horse, or an eagle. Now please don't hate me for saying cat. YES, this game is bursting with panthera awesome and YES, Neku's name looks like 'neko,' which is not a very nice thing to call somebody in Japan. But here's my reasoning – cats are these creatures that are perfectly capable of living by their own rules, but if you give them affection, they love you back. Kind of. They're also a bit arrogant, and act like they're too cool to bother moving sometimes. And they aren't exactly as loyal as a dog – which calls back to when Neku's friend died, and he completely walked away from human interaction, yes? So there. If a cat's owner dies (*tear*) then it will not show sadness like a dog does – it will move on, but it will be twice as hard to earn its trust after that. So Neku could be a kitty-boots. But he'd have to be a cool kitty-boots. I'm thinking something like a deep blue cat, like an actual panther this time (boo you Mr. H and your lazy-ass Noise). With yellow-to-orange tattoos that give him some kicker facial markings. When I say yellow-to-orange, I mean the lightest part is yellow and the darkest part is orange. Like Neku's hair. Ahem. But his ears would be like warped music notes, I'm thinking. And he'd have two tails, the whole nekomata thing, and his eyes would be yellow. Like sunshine. ...Neehhh, I don't really like this idea. Although I am totally pro-cat, that's just...too many cats, you know?

The horse thing...he'd be a violet horse with an orange flaming tattoo mane and tail, because that's cool. I think a horse, because they exemplify freedom – or they used to – and they're powerful creatures that could totally kick your ass if they wanted to. And if you've ever watched any of those corny horse movies, where the girl has to reach out to the wild stallion and get him to trust people – NEKU and SHIKI BUM BUM BAAAAWH. There's also the fact that Neku looks like a runner to me. He just does. Like, the way he dashes and stuff? Totally horsy! And horses are terrifying and lash out when they're angry. Like Neku. He tried to buck Joshua off, but Josh is one persistent bastard. This one's my second favorite.

Finally, an eagle – eagles are pretty much the concept of freedom with a pair of wings and a beak, given that they can fly wherever they want, and let's face it, nobody messes with eagles. They're like...untouchable. Eagles are pretty proud creatures, and the King of the Air is the eagle, so...Neku. I'm thinking he'd be a scarlet eagle with lime-green eyes and orange tattoos, like a firebird or something. A phoenix dies and rises from the ashes - Neku rose each week to fight with burning vigor and determination, right? He'd have tattoo flames on his tail and wingtips and stuff, to reflect his pyrokinesis – every once in a while, he'd fly across the screen in a burst of flame and stuff. Some of those mayaincaztec depictions of eagles have them with a spiky feather crest and those round things over their ears, and it reminds me of Neku. I'm thinking he'd have aztecy tattoos all over him, you know? He'd be like an eagle warrior, with saber-like wingbones that he'd use for shockwave attacks. And then he'd dash by sweeping his wings and zipping along. He could pick up stuff and throw it at you, like Cornix Canor, but then he'd use psycho-wingbeats instead of his claws, because he's cool like that. And then, he'd occasionally throw back his head and screech, using a veritable Street Jam psych that would immobilize you. Dude, I like this one the best. EAGLES.


	10. In which Pork Guts are Scoped Out

**_JOSHUA TRIPS_**

CHAPTER TEN: IN WHICH NEKU AND JOSHUA SCOPE OUT THE GUTS OF PORK CITY

**HELLO LOOK AT ME I'M AN APOLOGY:** I'm sorry this took so long. D: Buuut...my wonderful Beta, Jaunea, is not functioning properly. She's in the shop. We're getting work done, but...*sigh* It's chronic. Homeworkitis. Horrific bugs in the programming. Dying of overwork. She needs to rest. Rest, Jaunea! REST, AND DREAM OF JOSHUA, WHILE I PINE AWAY BY THE WINDOW...WAITING...FOR YOU...TO BETA CHAPTER ELEVEN, YOU SLACKER.

The Story So Far: Joshua and Neku have landed in an alternate dimension simply because Joshua's balance sucks – he has tiny feet, you can't blame him – but hopefully, you knew that by now. So, ignoring the gratuitous incorrect use of the word "hopefully" that pervades this fic, Joshua and Neku have begun taking steps to get home. Apparently this translates to "I'm-a gonna hop down a pipe, mmmkay Nekky-pants?" So...yeah. Nobody reads this header thing. I know for a fact, because nobody noticed the one back a few chapters was missing. What will Joshua discover - tru wuv, an all-hours pool, or a bunch of dirt? Read on...

Rating: Rated T for terrifying. Like Yume Nikki. That game is terrifying. I suggest you play it.

OF NOTE IN THIS CHAPTER: I...don't...know.

Genre: Parody/Adventure...I'm starting to think that putting this here is a little monkey redundant.

* * *

_Okay,_ thought Joshua. _As of this moment, I have officially breached the world record of stupidity and am blazing a trail into the wild unknown. God help me_.

In case you haven't picked up on it yet, Joshua was regretting his decision to jump with an increasing fervor. The hot, dry air whistled past his face, stinging his eyes and clawing at his nose; he had fallen smoothly for an instant or two and then smacked into the wall, and of course NOW he was tumbling down the vent, bonking every panel of the shaft with a vengeance. It hurt like crazy.

He didn't fall that long, maybe a second or two. Just long enough for him to think, _Good grief, how deep is this thi_-**WHACK!** ..._Oh._

Joshua slammed into the ground hard, and the wind was evicted from his lungs with such a painful jerk it was forced to take up residence on the moon. _OH! Oh, dear..._ He laid there, numb from the initial shock, completely paralyzed for a moment, unable to so much as breathe – and suddenly, flooding his back in white waves, crackling through his fingers like fireworks, the jagged nettles of purple pain burst into feverish bloom. Spots swam through his vision like bloody fireflies, and Joshua was rendered blessedly unconscious for a bare handful of seconds. That was short-lived, unfortunately, and he was reeled back in with a merciless YOINK. "Aagh!"

...We should probably give him a second to recover. Otherwise, any last remaining scraps of dignity in his body will explode with the force of nuclear warheads and probably eject his sanity into distant space.

…

...You okay there, Josh?

"Hhhhhhh," was all he could manage. He was still stuck in the position he'd landed in, and was weeping softly. From the sheer agony of it all, mind. Not because he was sad or scared or wimpish like that. Because, despite appearances and physical prowess, Joshua was not a wimp (mentally). He was tough as nails. Tough as nails. _Tough as _(sob)_ nails_...

Five minutes later, the tough guy had pulled himself together. The pain had subsided enough so that he was once again capable of motion, and after a short recess, he was back on his feet. Swaying, sobbing, rubbing the giant bruise that had replaced his dorsal side, bemoaning his accursed luck and all that, but he was _on his feet_. Lesser men would have broken – nay, shattered! - faced with such oppression as a crash-landing from that height.

Well, that's probably an exaggeration – I've never jumped from a height of twenty feet, so you try it and tell me how it goes, yes? And anyway, in Joshua's case, he had landed on something soft and rubbery, which helped soften the impact a bit. It still hurt like nothing Joshua remembered, except maybe getting his tattoos, but that has nothing to do with this.

It was very hot in there, and very dark, but a sliver – well, okay, a box – of dim, warm light shone somewhere up above, and provided enough illumination for Joshua to see the vague suggestions of vines covering the floor and crawling up the wall. From the looks of things, he was in a pit of some sort. Ugh, _again_ with the pitfalls! Joshua shook his head, not anticipating the day when these pits grew teeth and he had to change his name to Harry or something. ...Well, 'til then, he had to get out of this place – nothing to see here, and he needed a/c, STAT. There seemed to be no getting back out through the vent, and the only other exit option was to go through the box of light.

_So mote it be_, Joshua thought grimly, steeling his jaw and shuffling forth to tackle the vines growing up the wall. It would have been markedly easier going up, had the heat not insisted on stifling his every action, smothering his strength, and sucking away his energy like an enormous leech.

It took a little while, but eventually Joshua hauled himself over the edge of the window and rolled out onto a hot metal floor. "GyaaaHRK," he said, springing to his feet and clutching his general self, which was in much pain. In Composer Mode, he was basically invincible, so this sort of thing wouldn't bother him for a second – but neh! Boy Mode was basically a limp strip of bacon – tenderized with Nekufists, greased with sweat, and tossed into a frying pan! It sucked _so_ much. How did Neku – and come to think it, the rest of the human race – how did they even survive for a day, getting constantly beaten up like this? Or did the universe (read: this fanfiction) just hate him with that much of a passion? Sigh...

With the burning sensation in his backside fading to not much more than a tingling warmth, Joshua took a moment to survey the area. He was standing on some sort of tiny train track with several carts perched upon it, full of black...stuff? Material? Crap? Everything was entangled in a wild lush of Pamela vines, the creepers splayed so thickly over the track there was no way any miniature trains would be plowing Josh's way anytime soon. Apparently, the pit Joshua had just crawled out of was some kind of furnace – out of commission, as it had been attacked by rose-vines and been soundly defeated. Well, of course. They would have let that happen, if they worshiped this titanic plant. In any case, he was privately thanking Lucky Star and all of its obscure humor that he hadn't jumped down a _smoking_ vent; it would be somewhat difficult to play High N Low as a charred heap of ashes.

This new chamber was somewhat like a giant, elongated pizza oven. There were furnaces flanking the walls, illuminating everything in flickering amber light. The air was hazy and thick with heat, and our Joshua was suddenly grateful that all the hot sinus inaction going on kept him from tasting the smoke. Speaking of sinuses, he took a moment to attend to his nose, which had seized the lapse in constant supervision and busily dribbled its contents all over his upper lip with twice the intensity. "Oh, _fridge it_," Joshua grumbled, hating that his body would betray him like this. It wasn't supposed to...to leak! And not into his mouth, either! What was skin for if not to keep your fluids _inside?_

Urk, he was leaky all over - blecch! Joshua expressed his disgust at the more slurpy aspects of humanity through a strangled sort of moan, but then - a stir of motion in the corner of his peripheral vision set off warning bells. Joshua dove behind a pile of overturned rusty carts and hid for a second, peeking out only when his innate curiosity started bashing his head against the wall and shouting _WHAT. WAS. THAT?_

What, indeed? The ground was covered in the rusted train track things, like some sort of bizarre railroad junction. And on these rails, groaning and creaking and making strange chff-chff noises, were...people?

No, no, they were too short to be people...even if this _was_ Japan (which still celebrated the demise of The Wicked Witch of the Far East, even after becoming a civilized country) they were the size of toddlers, which seemed a bit excessive. They were also kinda _boxy_. Like toddlers, stuffed in crappy homemade robot costumes. And the way they kind of rolled around, like robot box toddlers on...Segways? Joshua squinted and tilted his head to the side, not wanting to draw much attention to himself just yet - he had no idea if these cardboard box peoplemover-baby-children were hostile or anything. They were holding shovels, after all...right? Or were those things giant forks?

One of the cardboard box peoplemover-baby-children came trundling by after a minute, and with a mix of relief and "...huh?" he realized that the things were robots. Not the cutesy kind you'd normally find in Shibuya, the robots that look like pink EVEs with cat ears. (Everything in Japan has to have cat ears – why, you ask? Because it's DESU.) No, this was more of a busted WALL*E, if anything. It was rather like a headless torso made of rusted iron machinery, complete with pistons and gears and such, mounted on top of a trolley that looked like a compressed train engine - to go with the rail guide on the floor, of course. To give you the size of the bottom part, it could have passed for one of Joshua's model trucks. If it had a fresh coat of red paint, and maybe a scantily-clad Barbie or two stuffed in the front seat next to a plush Joshua toy, well...sure. The robot had what looked like a snow shovel for an arm, and it was carrying a load of black-ish stuff. As it rattled by, Joshua could hear the old rustbucket groaning and creaking in protest. Oh, come on. Nobody oiled their robots? If you're going to have a robot slave, you can't just ignore it. Make it do something other than shovel coal all day – like, for example, give you a massage in the bathtub, rub your feet, fetch you hors'devours... Joshua shook his head sternly.

_Wait. Coal? What the – there's no coal mine under Shibuya! If there was, well, I would be making PROFIT by now!_ Joshua the money-crazy leaned over to study the – waitaminnit. That wasn't coal, that was a pile of gray-black, oddly shiny...dirt.

Precisely as that flickered through his mind's eye, Joshua's brain suddenly registered the fact that he was kneeling in dirt. And then, he realized that there were clouds and clouds of it floating in the air...and suddenly, he felt a coughing fit coming on. Wuh-oh.

He tried his best to swallow it, to quell the urge, making several gag-like motions as he did so – however, it was rather like trying to swallow a nuclear reactor. This coughing fit could not be contained in the ribcage of a mere human, Composer status be damned! It swelled like a blowfish, indignant with the scant accommodations, and jammed its spiky fingers in the back of Joshua's windpipe, trying to pry open the vocal chords so it could escape. Joshua put up a heroic effort, but in the end, it was too much for him. He gasped for air, choked, and his lungs exploded. BAMF.

Well, okay, not really. But it sure felt like it. In any case, Joshua made a lot of noise, and even fell right in front of the robot. He froze and let his gaze trail upwards.

The robot dumped his load of dirt into the furnace with a crackling hiss, rotated its top section around in a perfect 180, and then went trundling off.

"You see, they can't hear," Joshua explained rather hoarsely to nobody in particular. He felt the burning, insatiable need to narrate right now, to calm his racing heart. He didn't want to feel like he was talking to himself or anything, so he decided to create an imaginary companion to throttle with senseless glarb. "And I'd expect they're blind as well. Hm? Don't tell me you didn't notice, Neku! They don't have heads! With your powers of perception, it's a wonder you don't trip over your own feet. Hee, hee..."

Joshua's imagination had been curbed by the head cold, you could say.

He pushed himself off the dirt pile and tackled the futile exercise of brushing the filth off his shirt. "Oh, brother. Huh? Oh, you're a very dirty boy yourself, Neku." After a second of that hanging in the air, Joshua let rip a bloodcurdling scream and dug his nails into his face, going off like a siren. "AAAUGH! FREAKING GYPSIES!"

* * *

Speaking of Neku, the spoken-of one was getting worried.

The instant Joshua's cream-puffy self had slid down the vent, Neku had been struck with a bizarre feeling that really made no sense. Joshua was a jerk, plain and simple, but... He suddenly felt very exposed without Joshua standing there – like a fish out of water, very out-of-place. The world was suddenly very quiet without Joshua breathing in his ear or jabbering on about something or other. It was strange, being used to someone's company for two days straight and then being suddenly_ alone_. It felt uncomfortable, even if Neku didn't exactly hold Joshua in the highest regard. Almost like, with Joshua there, he had a kindred spirit in the fight, someone who understood how messed up wack this place was. Now? He was alone.

And he kind of missed Joshua.

Just a little bit.

Neku had never been very good with tight spaces or anything. He liked his freedom. And the idea of plunging into a vent, well, that freaked him out, to be honest. It was slightly impressive to Neku that Joshua the prissy kid would even consider the action, and even though it was Mr. Bowling Shirt down the chute, Neku felt like a little bit of himself had fallen into the darkness with his partner and was in danger of...exploding, or whatever. Even though his companion was just in the building behind him, Neku couldn't help but worry himself into a rut. Suppose the puffsickle didn't come back?

Neku didn't know what he'd do, but he trusted Joshua would find a way to weasel out of any sticky situations that came his way. Joshua was the Composer, he could handle himself. ("Bored...I'm bored...") Neku was just _unoccupied_, and when he wasn't _doing_ anything, his imagination got a little restless. ("Bored...boring...boredom...") Already, he was fidgeting around, tapping his foot and messing with his hangnails. ("So..._bored_...nnngghhh...!") When it had nothing better to think about, his head decided to fill him with worries and nagging doubts and stray little shreds of fear, until he felt like he might explode. Music helped like a magic salve thingy, but his mp3 player was dead, and there were no computers to charge it on. And so, the pinnacle of orange-haired evolution was stuck without anything to do but worry, worry, worry. ("BORED!")

And here was a new thought – suppose a pack of Joshes saw him standing there, alone, and decided to make off with him? That was just unacceptable. Neku leaned back against the vine-covered wall, twisting one of his limp bangs out of habit. The Joshes would probably materialize out of nowhere, exchange pleasantries, and then move in for the kill – that seemed to be what the strategy was around here, anyway. They'd try to lure him into a false sense of security, and then... they'd_ get_ him. Well. Neku planned to go down swinging. Since there was really nothing else to do that would fill the itching void of boredom in his lower back and keep his growing paranoia at bay, Neku decided to play the scenario over and over in his head. Suppose the Joshes – a pack of six, let's say – came after him. They'd probably form a ring, and try to pin him to the wall – but no, he'd knock out one – yeah! - or wait, maybe it'd be better if he just ran if he saw any – and then he'd head for – wait, where would he go?

The Joshes would recover within seconds, and he'd only be an easy target in the open. Neku decided he'd head for a crowd and try to lose himself in the sea of clones milling about. He'd run around a while, then double back to the motel and hide in their room. At that point, Neku would call – waitaminnit - _he _had Joshua's cell phone! And apart from that, he didn't even know his phone number!

Well, that was a problem easily remedied. Neku slid into a sitting position and took out the two cells, one blue and one orange. Complementary colors. Also the colors of the first two levels of his and Shiki's Fusion pin. Funny, that had never occurred to him until now. Well, whatever. Neku clicked through Joshua's phone, searching for the number. It ought to be under options...okay, no...all right, what about settings...? The phone number was usually on the 'Phone Status' page, but...

Geez! Why couldn't he find it? Had the fluffiness really consumed every facet of Joshua's being? Neku grumbled ("...He's beyond help...") and decided to just add his phone number to Joshua's contact list. That way, if this sort of thing happened again and Joshua wound up in trouble, he could call Neku to come bail him out.

Joshua's poor cell had been hacked and modded so much that it was practically beyond recognition, but Neku was able to figure out how to add a contact after a few minutes. He plugged in his number, and with that finished, decided he'd do a little poking around with the applications. Who knew when he'd get his hands on this thing again? Especially when they got home to their Shibuya, and Joshua's phone powers came back...

WAIT. _Neku had Joshua's phone._ And the puff's powers weren't even working!

...So how did he throw that can?

Neku ruminated on that for a moment, gnawing on the inside of his mouth. So...he had actually thrown it? And actually managed to pull out a like, twenty-link chain bonking? Without any psychic aid? Naah, that was _impossible_...

Just then, he heard a scream. It emanated from within the vent, the overlapping, metallic echoes distorting it to a faint wail – but he recognized it immediately from the way it cracked in the middle. Joshua!

Something was wrong.

* * *

"Ah...that felt good," Joshua mumbled when he had vented enough. Being alone down here, he had a substantial margin for hysterics. But insane freak-out sessions just weren't his style, so he kept the wailing angst to a minimum of thirty seconds. He felt better now, anyway, and thought to make a few revisions to his imaginary companion, the better to flip off his gypsy curse. "Ahem. Well, there's got to be an exit around here somewhere, wouldn't you say? They couldn't have built this place without a way for the workers to get out. Unless they...did. H-_hm!_ Don't be so morbid, now." Joshua took a deep breath and hoped that wasn't the case, because he sure couldn't get out through the vent. "Besides, it looks like there's not much else to see here, and more to the point, I'm roasting alive. Come along, Eri."

Joshua and ImaginEri stepped boldly out from behind the cart pile, ready to look for an exit. Joshua had to take a four-minute recess to wipe his shoes off and stuff them on his feet, and then they were good to go. They found the exit after a few minutes of stomping around the miniature train tracks and straining to pierce the smoggy air with their vision – and on that front, the acid green "EXIT" sign certainly helped. Joshua and his figment pushed the door open and took in a spiral staircase, as well as air that was much cleaner – and more importantly, air conditioned. He made a faint noise of glee, but let ImaginEri go first, since she was a lady.

"It would seem that we're on the bottom level," Joshua commented as they ascended the staircase. "Which appears to be some sort of boiler room area. The next level should be something like electric generators and – oh, look, see the sign by the door? I told you. Now the next one will probably be above ground, don't you think? _Hff_...I hate stairs..._hff_..."

Joshua kept blabbering on to himself as he entered 1F, and showed no signs of stopping. Nervous habit. Talking settled his jitters, helped him sort things out in his head. If he could keep talking long enough, he could find the solution to anything.

As expected, 1F was just as clean and spotless as usual, the elevator area still looking vaguely like a gym, what with the white walls and the polished wood floor. Joshua scowled, not too fond of gyms. He informed ImaginEri of this fact, but she didn't seem very impressed, because she didn't provide him the satisfaction of a response.

"Fine. Give me the cold shoulder, I don't care. You're not even real. I could impale you with an imaginary Jesus Beam right at this moment, you know." Joshua crept over to the doors at the end, but discovered they were locked. Drat. "Just so you know. It's not like I need you or anything. You're nothing without me."

ImaginEri regarded him with indifference. Joshua sighed and tried the exit doors. Those were unlocked, of course, but Joshua wasn't finished here yet, so he went back to the elevators. "All righty...um...I guess we'll do a floor-by-floor analysis. ...Gish-a-gosh, this is weird...Pork City is supposed to be swarming with people, and beyond that, Noise! I'm not picking up anything at all!"

Even though he couldn't scan in an alternate universe, he still had his Dead-O-Vision™ eyes. Pork City was typically flooded with Noise sigils; angry bears, jealous ravens, freakin' frogs, goddamned bats...but THIS Pork City was clean. "This is the place where thoughts are recycled, Noise gather, and all that! Not that I'd expect _you_ to understand." When she didn't even respond to his jab, he crossed his arms and invented a few words for her.

He dispelled his imaginary companion, because who could tell what was up past this point? Guards? Guard robots? Laser beams and James Bond-style death traps? Joshua shivered slightly at the thought, nervously excited. Venturing into the unknown...a feeling Joshua didn't have very often, given that he knew Shibuya's outs and ins like his own skin and guts. It could be dangerous and all that, and it was better if he just kept his mouth shut from here on. (In hindsight, it probably wasn't the smartest idea to make the sick one do the stealthy reconnaissance mission.)

It would have been better if Neku had come along, but, well...them's the breaks. So Joshua hit the ↑ button, watched the elevator doors open with a faint whoosh, and hopped inside eagerly.

His first discovery was that 2F was full of _stuff_ – heaps of interior decorating, cafe tables discarded as if something had dumped them here as an afterthought, kitchen supplies ripped from the walls, a bunch of coffee makers, a zoo's worth of stuffed animals, the occasional vending machine - and more than anything, piles and piles of clothes. Same thing with 3F, crammed to the brim with every conceivable flavor of what-have-you. It seemed to Joshua that the two floors were being used like massive storage levels for anything and everything that had once been part of Pork City, clearing the way for new things. In any case, the two levels were hopelessly full, and rather like trying to navigate a junkyard – the Grim Heaper would have had a field day, but weak, sickly Joshua did not. 4F was absolutely clogged full of bizarre machinery, humming and whirring and flashing patterns of lights, with bundles of tubes and wires covering the ground like metal mangrove roots. There were lots of doors, but the only ones that were unlocked led to a_ janitorial closet_, of all things. Joshua wondered what the usefulness of a mop was in a level that was ninety percent inanimate electronics.

But there wasn't much else to see there, so Joshua had gone up to the next floor quickly – he wanted to keep this thing as close to an in-and-out affair as possible. Suppose, in his absence, Neku went running off, engaging in all manner of horrible unauthorized activities with those clones? Add the fact that Neku was known for disobeying rules, was unsupervised at the moment, and had Joshua's precious phone in his clutches and... Joshua really didn't want to think about it. Suppose he dug up the Cinderella picture? Or the sailor suit picture? Or even the one of Neku he was saving for a rainy day? (The fact that Neku wrote his name on his underwear amused him greatly. Was he afraid he'd lose them during the morning commute or something? Hee, hee...)

Plus, the sheer emptiness of Pork City was getting to him. No Noise, no people, no guards...nothing. And these vines...they were everywhere.

The elevator door opened with a faint whoosh of air, as usual. If Joshua had been able to use his nose, he would have immediately noticed that the smell - a mix between Chanel no. 750 - Carpette Cleanere and Eau De Doctor's Office with a bit of that classic hand sanitizer thrown in - was most definitely _un_usual. As it was, he was completely clogged, so he stepped out of the lift and into 4F without any feeling of foreboding.

This was short-lived, however. The first thing Joshua noticed was that he was not in a carbon-copy elevator area, or even in a room with a vague resemblance to the elevator area. He was in a hallway.

An empty hallway, and it looked like the kind you might find in an institution of some sort. Almost instantaneously, Joshua felt a little disgruntled, since he had never liked hospitals. Particularly not the...empty kinds. The boy shivered, which may have had something to do with the fever, or with his clairvoyance (it was prickling him all over, in waves of numb chills and strange warm spots – if you had taken a look at him with a thermal camera, he would have resembled something off the weather report), but certainly not with fear. He wasn't afraid. Even though he half-expected a zombie nurse to pop out of nowhere and grab him, Silent Hill-style. Where was everyone?

He went along like a spy, just in case. But the novelty eroded quickly, and besides, there were no good places to hide in the white, uniform hallway. Joshua plodded along in relative silence, taking in everything slowly. His clairvoyance wouldn't be so antsy if there wasn't something of great importance just ahead. Since his powers were watered down to a great degree, he wasn't getting visions or anything, so he couldn't be sure where the important thing was – only that it was close, and he should keep his eyes open. The lights in the hallway were flickering, some of them having burned out. It had an eerie sense of dilapidation, this hallway, as if the janitor had kicked the bucket years ago and nobody had bothered to replace him. Look, there were spider colonies draped all over the dusty corners, and...it was just so _quiet_. Apart from the distant hum of machinery and the lights flickering (not counting the noises of sickness Joshua helpfully supplied), there was no sound.

The hallway extended for a great distance, and Joshua was beginning to wonder if he should have gone the other way when he suddenly felt a knife of premonition get him in the nape of his neck. "Ow," he mumbled, looking up. Just ahead was a set of double doors, the kind you find in – guess what – hospitals, the same color as the rest of this weird place. Joshua hadn't even noticed them, and if not for Composer's intuition he would have blundered right past without a clue.

"Thank heavens," Joshua said under his breath, starting towards the doors. About then, he heard something strange – a distant, rapid _clmp-clmp-clmp_ – hey...wait a minu-footsteps! Joshua was suddenly an Olympic gold-medalist, putting on a positively ridiculous burst of speed that would have made particles of light weep jealous tears.

He dove through the doors like a bolt of lightning, powered by the frantic electric charges lacing up and down his spine. "YEEK!" He hit the floor (painfully) and rolled a good distance, somersaulting directly into a cold wall. Joshua wound up upside-down, head between his legs and back pressed to what felt like frigid glass and dizzier than a carousel horse, but somehow he managed to right himself and crawl over behind the entrance.

Josh managed to force his unwilling body into a standing position beside the left door, balling his fists and ready to ambush the first thing he saw. Since there was no way his pursuer hadn't noticed him, what with the coughing and all, he might as well knock them a new one. There was nowhere to hide, anyway. Joshua's heart throttled against his ribcage, the electricity in his back spreading through his body like white fire...

Suddenly, a hand pushed open the door on the right. Joshua exploded - "Ha-AAAAAAAUGH!" - and tackled the threat to the ground.

"EEK! Ow! Oh, geez-!" The two of them went tumbling backward with a loud crash, Joshua smacking into the wall for the second time in five minutes. BAM!

There followed a frenzied, one-sided fistfight, with the tackled party trying their best to escape and Joshua trying his best to DESTROY. He thrashed around blindly, causing as much damage as possible.

"Dude! DUDE! STOP-oww! OW! CRAP, NOT THE 'PHONES-"

At that moment, something clicked. "...Neku?"

"YET ANOTHER BRILLIANT DEDUCTION FROM YOSHIYA KIRYU: PRIVATE DICK EXTRAORDINAIRE." A pause. "...LET GO OF MY ORGANS."

Joshua released Neku's pancreas and staggered to his feet. "...My apologies, I thought you were a...uh..." He thought it over. "I thought you were one of those clones, coming to clap me in irons."

Neku groaned, massaging his tummy. "Oh, sure. Be careful with my ventral cavity, will you?"

Josh shifted easily into his 'who-cares' stance, which, as you know, looks somewhat like a deliberately half-assed cross between raising his hands in surrender and a shrug. "Fine..."

As _if_ Joshua wanted his hands wrapped around Neku's ventral cavity, anyway. That would just be bizarre. Suppose... would it be shaped like an hourglass? Or even weirder – what if he had two ventral cavities, one for the top half and one for the bottom, connected only by a few tubes here and there? Did that mean Neku could survive being chopped in half at the midsection? And then there was the whole question of the diaphragm... Was it the size of a bottlecap or something? How did he BREATHE? Did he absorb oxygen through his skin, frog-like? Or maybe his hair was like, made of external gills or something. Or maybe he was an anaerobic organism. Following in that vein, could Neku live comfortably in a vaccum? Or would he explode like everything else? Or was Joshua just exaggerating things, and in doing so expressing some sort of primal envy that surfaced when he was faced with this tubercular, emaciated _stick_ of a boy? Because Joshua himself was merely thinnish? Because...Neku was...beating him, somehow? Beating him at being skinny...?

Joshua sensed misbehavior somewhere in his thought process, and so shut his brain off for a second and allowed it to cool off. Ahem. Joshua was fine with the way he looked, thank you. He didn't need to beat Neku at _everything_, particularly not anorexia. It was probably just the fever. He had heard of some people feeling very guilty and then later "discovering" they had eaten a bad peanut butter sandwich the hard way (like, for instance, the author).

"Ahem," said Joshua, switching his brain back on. "Why are you here, anyway? I thought you were scared of vents."

"Yoshiya K./Joshua, I am not scared of vents. I'm scared of frying to death on a hot plate, boiling alive in a vat of scalding water, being thrown in a furnace, trapped in a blocked air vent, or getting eaten by a dragon. So there. Anyway, I heard you scream, and I got all IT'S HERO TIME. Yeah. I came to rescue you."

Joshua snorted. He was a little embarrassed that Neku had heard his little 'episode' earlier, but the Proxy didn't need to know that. "What makes you think it was me who screamed?"

"I...could not..._ever_...forget that sound." Neku shuddered involuntarily.

Josh rolled his eyes and helped his compadre, who was still kneading his intestines, to his feet. "...Need any help with that massage, partner?"

And just like that, the curse reared its ugly head into the affairs of Yoshiya Kiryu once more! "No thanks, creepwad," Neku spat, pulling his shirt down. After a moment of thought, he added: "When we get back, you can do my shoulders. Nothing involving the ventral half, though. That's private propety."

Again with the ventral. "...Okay, okay, I get it, hands off."

Neku stretched and took a few steps back. "Whoa...hey, Josh, look at that!"

"What?" Joshua turned around, and felt the perpetual blonde moment boot him full in the face at maximum power.

The two out-of-dimensioners were standing on a stretch of scaffolding that mirrored the hallway in its length, but was otherwise much different. This overlooked a positively cavernous room – to give you an idea of the size, it looked like they had basically removed the floor of most of 4F and all the walls of 3F, creating a massive, two-storey hollow space in the building – that was almost completely dark, painted with stark indigo shadows. The only light came from what was being stored in this room, the rows and rows and rows of cylindrical vessels, holding luminescent blue fluid that cast a frigid lonely light upon the cold skeletons of machines. The walls of tubes, arranged in floor-to-ceiling grids of a bazillion by five, stood frozen in sterile silence; but there were what looked like mechanical arms zipping in and around the cells, stopping to hover by some, punching in codes near others. Most of these tube-things were empty, but some near the back were occupied by..._humanoid_ forms.

"...What the hell?" Neku muttered, his and Joshua's hands flying to their respective heads of hair, commencing the tugging and curling of the bangs in almost perfect synchronization.

They looked at each other and quickly stuffed their respective hands in their respective pockets. "Now, this..." said Joshua.

"THIS is a happening," Neku murmured, still kind of cross-eyed from taking in the whole thing. If you ever go to Shibuya one of these days, head over to Hotel Excel Porkyu in your Joshua cosplay (they're freaking cheap, don't lie to yourself) and tell me if it looks like the kind of place where you find a bunch of tubey things that look like something out of Jon Irenicus's laboratories. Not to say that the Japanese aren't cooking up some marvelous new form of intelligent life down in the basement, but...it's a MALL, for God's sake! You don't just roll into Pork City and think, _gee whilikers, this here sure looks like a place where cold unfeeling robot arms experiment on people in holding tanks! _Unless you do, and if so, you're probably the kind of person who dances in the rain and runs with wolves. In other words, completely insane. If you're taking that as a compliment, and I know you are, don't. It's not a good thing, and it's demeaning to actual insane people.

...Oh, brilliant. It seems I've caught the preachy speechies from Neku.

"Darn skippy," said Neku smugly, comfortable in his ability to infect every carbon-based life form in a twenty-foot radius.

Joshua had a good giggle over that, cut short by a sneeze that felt rather like his lungs were attempting to shove a machete out of his nose. "Hee, hee...AHEM. We should go check this out, don't you think?"

"Definitely. Man, if only your dumb ramen mystery had creepy elements like this! Then, maybe you'd be more of a Sherlock Holmes and less of a Nancy Drew!"

Joshua saw fit to overlook that last comment. "Look, Neku. There's a set of stairs over yonder that head down to the floor. Shall we?"

"We shall," said Neku. "We shall."

* * *

**A/N:** Joshua has a gypsy curse.

It's not his fault, per se. It's his great great great great great great great grandfather's fault. You see, the Kiryu family has long held a prestigious tradition of being stuck-up jerks. Their assholian techniques are handed down, father to son - it's their variation on the whole "family heirloom" thing. So, it was only a matter of time before they pissed off some gypsies. Yaoi fanraptor gypsies, no less.

More on that later.

IF THE TWEWY CAST WERE POKEMON: Neku would be a Combusken, and Joshua would be a Kirlia. (You know it. Besides, his hair is kirli.) Eri would be a Milotic, and Rhyme would be a Pachirisu. Beat and Shiki are the Pokemon trainers - Beat owns Josh and Rhyme, Shiki owns Neku and Eri. Or something.

Following this to its logical conclusion...

To face them is our true test, to erase them is our cause...NOISEMON! Gotta hear 'em all~ It's truee~ I know it's my DEST-IN-Y, NOISEMON! Oooh, you're my partners true, in a world that ends with you! NOISEMON! You pact with me, I'll pact with you! NOISE-Y-MOOON! Gotta hear 'em all! GOTTA HEAR 'EM ALL, NOISEMON!

Who's that Noisemon? Iiiiit's...WOLFHOOOOOG!


	11. In which More Pork Guts are Scoped Out

_**JOSHUA TRIPS**_

CHAPTER ELEVEN: IN WHICH NEKU AND JOSHUA SCOPE OUT THE GUTS OF PORK CITY SOME MORE

**HEY EVERYBODY - ON SEPTEMBER 29, I TURNED 14! NOW I CAN PRETEND TO DRIVE CARS WITH AN _EVEN GREATER DEGREE OF REALISM  
_(BECAUSE I'M 14)**

The Story So Far: Joshua and Neku have unwisely jumped down a vent and now are in this big space full of tubes. What mysteries does this chamber hold for them? What answers will they discover? FIND OUT...

Rating: Rated T for the tempestuous romantic "feelings" and deep dark pasts of the various Joshes! Not the main character's, though. His feelings are fluffheaded but not conflicting and definitely not romantic in the "love story" sense - and his past is pretty shallow and kind of pastel-colored.

OF NOTE IN THIS CHAPTER: I used to play Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn all the freaking time when I was a little kid. I thought those tube things were the coolest thing ever...but you know, I could never get out of the first dungeon unless I was an Avenger and stayed polymorphed into a wyvern constantly. See, when I was a little kid, I insisted on being that or an elven wizardess, which is not the survival-conscious choice for button-mashing eight-year-olds. Sigh...

Genre: Parody/Adventure

* * *

Elsewhere, in the backroom of the Pig Sigil Motel, the Joshes were sitting around, doing nothing.

Well, okay. They were doing some things. 2 and 3 were sitting cross-legged on the floor, playing hand games. ("Concentration sixty-four! No repeats, no hesitation! You go first, I'll go second, starting with: baked goods!" ) 4 was opening and closing his phone by flicking his wrist, smirking whenever the action resulted in a satisfactorily loud _SNAP_.5 was practicing his shiatsu massage, alternating his victims between 2, 3, and 4, who had made it somewhat of a game – 5 would sneak up behind him, but 4 would dodge at the last minute and snap his phone, etc., etc. 6 was pacing.

"Cheesecake!" chirped 2. "Sixy, you're making me dizzy..."

"Bagel!" cried 3. "Yeah, at the rate you're going, you'll wear a hole in the floor before shutdown."

"Hmph," was all 6 said. The two members of his pack shrugged and went back to their game.

Josh #6, or more technically A6-0006, had no intention of dealing with the other members of his pack right now. He had other things on his mind – where was 1? What was taking him so long? He should have reported back by now; it didn't take much to drop a text, and a simple message would suffice. 6 just had to know he hadn't been captured, he had to know he wasn't compromising information...ugh...

Trust your partner be damned, that kid was too slippery to handle. 6 had known there was something off about that particular Josh ever since they'd pacted him in – maybe it was the way he came up to them, and demanded they let him in; maybe it was the way he stood, arms outstretched like a martyr...

...Or maybe the peculiar sheen of liquid in his eyes. 6's pack had torn his Neku away and practically ripped him apart for the points. It was a common occurrence, though, nothing to _cry _about. Most freshies, upon the erasure of their Neku, were simply irritated; others got in the way, and these were "had" as well, just for the fun of it. (In fact, 6 liked the screams of Joshes more than those of the Nekus, if only because it was ever so satisfying to make the smarmy, stuck-up asses get a taste of real pain. Hee, hee.)

6 and his pack were one of the more formidable ones; they were all early units, and it was a wonder that none of them had won the Game by now. Only 6 knew the truth, but he told the others it was because of their strategy – which was basically overwhelm and conquer. It was slow going, since they focused all of their energies on one Neku at a time as opposed to several, but it had a higher success rate and nobody was empty for very long. However, after three years in the Game, one would think they ought to have won. But nobody really questioned it, since they all enjoyed what they were doing with great fervor.

However. 6 was used to being the king, the one, The Guy. He liked being where he was, on top of all the rest, with the freshies bending to his whims and the older units too weak to do anything about it. It was only logical that some other pack would get ambitious and try to usurp his throne, an 6 was not going to tolerate it. 1 was a newbie; he hadn't even "had" a single Neku for the whole time 6 had known him. He smelled of soap and dryer lint, of salty noodles and spicy chili. Not a trace of Neku, anywhere. He should have been malfunctioning, he should have been activating sporadically, and yet...he seemed to be acting normally.

And then, there was the fact that their pact felt strange and fuzzy and alien, and 6 couldn't quite sense his energy level at any given time. It was quite perplexing, and 6 had theorized that 1 was actually part of another pack, trying to infiltrate 6's from the inside and break it apart, allowing 1's pack to swoop in and claim the top spot. 6 did not trust 1 at all.

So why was he letting 1 carry out such an important mission? Well...

The reasoning was quite similar to the usual attack plan, actually. The point of it all was to lull him into a sense of security, and then strike when his pants were down...so to speak. Enemy party or no, 6 could not picture 1 as anything but a freshie. He just smelled so...so clean, so..._blegh_. And freshies were notorious for being naïve and willing to go too far, easily led into traps and easily outmaneuvered.

6 wanted to build up an illusion around his person, carefully crafted so that 1 would think _he_ was the one playing the others, flying under the radar, when in actuality he would be the one under the closest scrutiny. The enemy is weakest when he thinks he's won, after all. Basic Joshua programming, this was.

But here was the thing that bothered 6: 1 hadn't even checked in yet! They were scheduled to have the singular Neku on the third floor, and if that one little dope didn't show up, they would go ahead without him. As usual. How suspicious it was that 1 never showed up to their havings - the act of splitting points overrides previous pacts - but a freshie wouldn't have known about that particular rule.

This lead to the conclusion that 1 was a freshie that had been instructed by a senior unit to infiltrate 6's pack. Only an older unit would have been so familiar with the rules of the Game, and only an older unit could have told Josh #1 about the whole business of having and pacts. Due to this information, 6 had expected that 1, deprived of the crucial Neku "essence" that charged his fuel cells, would be scarfing down Special Shio Ramen like a half-starved bear - but no, no. He never finished his bowl - come to think of it, Joshua #6 was sure that 1 only ever poked at his food. What was wrong with that guy, anyway? Didn't he ever get _empty?_

If it had been 6 who was trying to infiltrate another pack, well, he would have taken every opporitunity to present himself as the pinnacle of naivete. A truly naïve person would send 6 a message every five minutes, updating on status and what not. So why wasn't he – was 1 really that cocky, was he really that stupid? 6 didn't like to think so, because that reflected badly on him. Or was there another reason...?

6's internal calculation sequence was halted abruptly when he felt the telltale buzz of his phone in his pocket. He pulled it out and opened it – a message from 1. Something inane about the Neku and the annoying tagalong Joshua going to get hamburgers. It had rained today, and 6 was glad that 1 clarified - the Neku had not been snatched up in the hysteria accompanying the rainfall. So far, so good...if this freshie was to be believed.

6 licked his lips. Well... Whatever the case was with 1, if he played his cards right, the outcome would only be delicious.

* * *

When we last left our heroes, they were running down the stairs. They were...still going down the stairs, at present, albeit at a much slower pace.

"Guuh...this is...did they have to take out the escalator...?" Neku griped.

"WHEEZE," Joshua replied.

Maybe the two of them would be at the bottom by now if they hadn't breaked for sandwiches halfway through.

...Well, to be fair, the stairway was pretty freaking huge, and steeper than the Texas Free-fall; the metal steps weren't slippery, thank the deity of your choosing, but they sure looked like it thanks to the dim blue lighting. The whole thing was prone to trembling and making odd noises of protest with each step you took, and to make things worse Joshua kept sneezing, which made the stairs jump in surprise – you'd think those steps had never heard a sick person before. That, or they were just being a bunch of enormous jackasses. You see, Neku was none too fond of rickety staircases. He had named each step Steve, and was picturing himself giving Steve a nice, healthy boot to the face each time he took another hesitant step, which helped his nerves a little. But only a little. Presently, Neku nearly slipped and tumbled down into the darkness as Joshua erupted into another coughing fit – it seemed to him that Josh and the Steves were compiling resources, multiplying their mutual assery by inordinate amounts. In any event, the two were nearing the bottom.

Neku was all too eager to leap to safety and jump off the godforsaken stairs early – but thanks to the abundant shadows he miscalculated, and instead of jumping at three steps, he jumped at six steps from the ground, landing on his face. Joshua laughed, coughed, slipped, and came tumbling after. They wound up sprawled on top of each other in a heap of pain and agony, so twisted up you couldn't tell which was which, and so it was safer to name the whole obnoxious groaning heap Josh-ne-ua-ku-ki-sa-ryu-kura-baka-ba-shish-kebab. Say "Josh-ne-ua-ku-ki-sa-ryu-kura-baka-ba-shish-kebab" five times fast and win a free sandwich of your choosing at participating Sunshine Burgers.

"OW, MY ORGANS!" said Josh-ne-ua-ku-ki-sa-ryu-kura-baka-ba-shish-kebab. They took one look at that ghastly name slapped on their personage(s) and hastily began untangling themselves.

Five minutes later, Joshua got to his feet and brushed the dirt off his jeans. Or not, since he couldn't really tell if there was any in the dim light - it was just safer to assume the worst. "We certainly could have done without that." He cracked his neck and sighed ruefully. "That was painful, awkward, and it wasn't conductive to the plot at all."

"Well, your royal fatness," Neku grumbled, still pissed about being folded into a papercraft version of Joshneku spaghetti - which tastes of an artistic balance between pig urine and monkey sweat, in case you were wondering. "Maybe if you quit jerking the stairs around so much, I wouldn't have fallen!"

"There is a glaring flaw in your logic," Joshua replied, as smoothly as one with a runny nose, congested trachea, sore throat and an achy head can manage. He put on a sexy smirk to compensate, not that the room was bright enough to properly appreciate it. "If I recall correctly, Mr. Neku, you _jumped_."

"Details." Neku got to his feet and smoothed out his shirt, which despite his constant prayers and religious not-washing was getting a little too small for him. Gosh dang it to heck, it was his favorite one, too.

Joshua carefully picked his way over to Neku – the ground was covered with important-looking wires and tubes, and they forcibly reminded Joshua of Pamela's "heart" in terms of tripping potential – and stuffed his hand in his pocket, surveying the area. There were wires all over the floor, it looked like; but, there were several raised pathways you could climb onto and walk around, like elevated platform sidewalks - apparently so that you didn't tread on any of the important pointed this out in a torrential bout of narrative, to which Neku just shook his head, pulled his headphones over his ears, and clambered on up before Joshua had a chance to really get going.

He frowned slightly, muttering under his breath, and let himself be hauled up by Neku because_ if nobody wants my help, I won't give them any_. They stood up together, took a second to breathe – and then Neku plowed off with that long-legged stride of his, heading directly over to the closest tube thing, Joshua wandering after. I say wandering because Joshua was swiveling his head around like a satellite dish, trying to take in all the signals this place was sending his way.

What bothered Joshua was the thick carpeting of strange machinery covering the floor and crawling up the walls, like the root-strewn depths of a metal rainforest. Flashing lights flickered like eyes in the trees, whirring noises flared to life like rattling breath, and Joshua would sometimes catch something moving around in the shadowy corners, just out of sight. He hoped it was a maintenance robot of some sort, and not a spy, ducking around in the darkness and just itching to run off to the Highclergypeople and blab about their covert operations. ...Well, "covert" was a bit of a stretch; he was coughing so loud that they didn't need a spy to know he was here – a janitor in the main hallway would be enough. Jeez...

Joshua realized Neku was flagging him down from a long way off – the second row of tubes to the back, in fact - and ran over to his partner. "Hm? What?"

"They're all stacked on top of each other, and there's rows going from wall to wall," Neku announced. "There's a whole lot of them."

"Water is wet, the sky is blue," said Joshua, doing his news anchor impression.

Neku glowered at him. "As I was saying, there's a whole lot. But this one, if you'll notice, has something _in _it."

At first glance, the tube looked just like the others – a cylindrical vessel, made of thick, curved glass and cemented firmly in a tangle of tubes and machinery. Like all the other tubes, it appeared to be full of a light blue fluid, which was fed in by a set of clear hoses and circulated through the vessel with a faint gurgling hum. The fluid must have been extremely cold, because the glass was frosted over with an icy chill – a chill that radiated out of the tubes and seeped through the air until a frost settled on Joshua and Neku's bones. No doubt the only thing keeping the tube from freezing solid was the constant motion of the fluid – being pumped in and out without rest. The thing that set this tube apart from its neighbors, though, was the thing inside – the silhouette of what was unmistakably a person.

Joshua squinted and leaned over the railing. "Tsk...so there is," he muttered, reaching out and wiping some of the fog off the glass. That way, they could better ascertain the identity of the prisoner. It was...

"Hey! It's one of your clones!" Neku declared. (He had been a little skittish about actually touching the tube, wondering if it would burn his skin off with its sheer coldness. Joshua was dead, so he didn't have to worry so much if his fingertips were suddenly frozen.)

"Well, would you look at that," Joshua murmured, feeling a strange pang in his diaphragm. He would never get used to seeing Joshuas get stuck in these situations – if he used a little imagination, he could easily picture that HE was the one in the tube, and the clone was the one with his Proxy. It gave him a weird, unsettling feeling of vertigo, and Joshua despised it. It felt like weakness.

The Josh in the tube didn't share our hero's concerns – he looked almost peaceful. He hung suspended in the bubbling fluid, held in place by a network of wires attached to various points on his body. Some of them seemed like they were growing out of his skin, others seemed to be bolted on – but Tubejosh didn't really mind, from the looks of things. It was probably too cold in there for him to feel pain, if he was even conscious. His hair floated freely, turned silvery-blue by the strange glow of the fluid, and as a result wound up looking a bit like the tentacles of a jellyfish in a backlit aquarium. Even with all of the stuff connected to him and the sheer cold of the container, Tubejosh's face was completely relaxed, as if he were swathed deep in the folds of dreamless sleeping.

"So...what do you think?" Neku muttered after a minute. "Why is he in there?"

"Who knows?" Joshua crossed his arms, thinking hard. "N99 said that they take you to the White Building after you win, and that's here..."

"...So this is...a winner?" Neku looked sick. "Dude...that's terrible. You go through hell and back, trying to win this Game, and when you finally do - they stuff you in the fridge? What the hell kinda system is _that?_"

"I wouldn't approve of it in a million years," Joshua said quickly. "Although, he doesn't seem to mind it much..."

"I mean, is there anyone here...? Is anyone going to come in this place and get him out?" Neku wondered, sounding slightly stressed. "He's - what if they forget? What if...what if..."

_Wait a minute..._Joshua leaned over again and wiped some more of the fog away. "Look on his clavicle, Neku!"

"...in the freezer while the universe dies of heat decay – huh? Look at his what, now?"

"His collarbone, you idiot," Joshua snapped. "What does it say?"

"D895-3443," Neku read with halting English. The ID was tattooed on the left of Tubejosh's chest, just beneath his collarbone. "That means he's a...D unit, right?"

"There's nobody past him," Joshua observed, scanning the rows and rows of vessels. "But behind him, the tubes are all full..."

Neku frowned. "Why, though? Why just the back? It's like they just _stopped_..."

Joshua had been busy rubbing the fog off the rest of the tube, exposing the whole of Tubejosh. The clone was anatomically correct, mostly – it looked a little too smooth, too perfect, too...manufactured to be Joshua – but it was as well-endowed as a Ken doll. Joshua didn't know whether to feel superior or put-out, so he did both at the same time and wound up coughing.

Neku noticed. "Ha, I always knew you were...special."

"Hilarious." Joshua sniffled and decided he was going to be put-out. "I bet they're all like that."

Suddenly, a bulb went off in Neku's head.

Back in Chapter Four... If the Joshes were made like this, then they couldn't have been - wait, what DID he overhear that night? As much as he wanted to bury the memory in the backyard and forget about it, Neku replayed the disturbing conversation in his head over and over and over again. But even after the sixth run-through, it _still _didn't make sense! Unless the newer models actually had – but wait, why would – _rrgh!_Joshes had to "have" 99 Nekus in order to win, right? How could this guy be a winner if he didn't have a wei–

"Earth to Neku!"

"Huh?" Neku blinked and looked at his partner. Joshua had frozen, staring deep into the shadows, and he looked like he was dead-set on melting holes in the fabric of space-time with the intensity of his gaze.

Joshua's voice was little more than a whisper, but his every syllable stabbed the air like a knife. "We need to leave. Now."

"...Why?" Neku followed Joshua's gaze with his own, but didn't see anything. "What's wro-"

"_Now_," Joshua said, grabbing Neku around the arm and power-walking stiffly towards the stairs. Neku had no choice but to stumble after him, bewildered.

They walked quickly up the stairs and were out the door in a few minutes, leaving the containment room completely still once again. Tubejosh's glass fogged up slowly, and the chamber was silent but for the whir of the life-support machines.

* * *

After a short retracing-of-steps through Pork City, our heroes had hidden themselves in the elevator. Our Joshua had not touched the up or down buttons yet, and was slumping against the wall, thinking hard.

Neku had no idea what had gotten into Joshua back there, but he decided he ought to know. "So, uh, Josh."

"Hmm?"

"What's up with the running away from the stuff we're trying to find...?" Neku blinked slowly, still trying to fathom WHY they had to be in here in the first place, looking for "clues." They should be focusing on getting out, not figuring out every little quirk and nuance of this alternate reality.

Joshua put on his disapproving-mother face again. "I think we're being followed."

"Oh," said Neku. "...wait, what? How is that possible?"

"I'm not really sure, but...I believe I saw a Josh clone back there, skulking around in the shadows. It could very well be just my imagination overreacting, but..." Joshua gave his face a nice, calming rub-down, grumbling in frustration. "Paranoia ensued!"

Neku arched an eyebrow. "...You don't even know, and yet you run off."

"It's better to be safe than sorry, Mr. Neku. ...Ugh, we need to check out the rest of this place. Unless they're following us..._and reporting back...Joshes...it's probably...yes, that's right...a plot...and they're using the.._._hmm, I see...that could work..."_

To those in his immediate area, Joshua had descended into incomprehensible muttering. Neku rolled his eyes, seeing what needed to be done here. Clearly, Joshua was overclocking his flux capacitor, and meltdown was imminent - unless he did something to stop this.

Neku reached over and gave Joshua a pat on the head. There was a jolt, and Joshua's head snapped up, looking startled. "What the...?"

"Hey," said Neku. "Pork City isn't going anywhere. We can always come back."

Joshua stared at him for a moment. "..."

"I think you're getting all fluffed-up about nothing. Sure, those clone things were eight kinds of weird, but does knowing about them really help us? We're trying to _escape_, remember. Didn't we have other things to do besides...uh, this?" Here he waved his hand around vaguely.

His partner regarded him forlornly. "...You're right," he mumbled. "This is unnecessary, isn't it? Completely unnecessary." Still, he couldn't shake the feeling they were _this close_ to finding something of colossal importance...

Neku nodded. "So...let's try and keep this thing simple, okay? We don't need to construct a thriving fortress; all we need to do is _get out_ and _get home_."

Orangeylocks did, indeed, have a point. Josh was making this too complicated; he needed to take things step by step, look at the bigger picture, not get tangled up in the details. He needed to play a fluid game here, not a rigid one. _Focus on the goal, here, Joshua. The enemy's gate is down, the enemy's gate is down_...Joshua took a deep breath, took a moment to untangle the mess of data overwhelming his senses and give it some semblance of order, ad interim. Once that was settled, they could get back to work, get back to furthering their escape.

And what of the strange premonition prickling away at his clairvoyance? Joshua decided it was just this GODDAMNED HEAD COLD messing with his M.O. again. Making him paranoid, hypersensitive...sloppy. It was horrible!

Neku saw the gears grinding away in Joshua's head, and the nearly-audible click when the change slid into place. He couldn't help but grin a little. "So, Joshua...have we got any idea what we're doing yet?"

"Yes, we have," murmured Joshua, locking his shoes in a Brown study. It took him some physical effort to tear his eyes away, but they flicked up to meet Neku's filled with some kind of purple purpose. "We have, we have, we have."

Neku was about to impose a new rule on muttering, but it was probably better that he didn't. Anyway...Joshua righted his shoulders and straightened up, looking a lot more organized. Good for him.

"So...Neku...here's what we're going to do..."

_-One blathery speech later...-_

"...after we blow this joint, naturally."

"Thank god. I feel like the Shadowhog is going to jump out at any moment and curse us to taste nothing but pork for all eternity."

"...What?"

"Nevermind."

* * *

Sota Honjo was walking a delicate line here.

He had contraband in his apartment, and he'd be thrown to the weed if he let Them get Their hands on her.

Nao...he'd go to the ends of the earth for her and her bizarre nickname fetish. There weren't supposed to be any girls in Shibuya, not since the Game began. Didn't want any "bugs" in the programming popping up, now. But let the rules say what they did - Sota had always been a punk, and of course he'd invited Nao over to his pad once or seventeen times, and in all the...er, excitement...kinda forgotten about the time limit. It was his fault she was stuck here, and he'd be damned if he didn't keep her well.

But it was the worst thing, getting groceries for your girlfriend in your dad's busted old pickup truck. What with the groaning pistons and wheels and thiggy-ma-whatsits everywhere doing things they weren't s'posed to... The thing was completely useless! Sota could only suppose his old man had somehow bribed the inspectors with baseball-sized diamonds – otherwise, there was absolutely no way this ugly thing could have scraped through shaken. He would have walked to the grocery store, but he couldn't carry all of the items without suspicions arising, so drive he did.

Now, if there had been any other option - any other one at all – Sota would have definitely not taken the stupid pickup truck. How _dare _it sputter and die just as he was driving past AMX? Seriously, he might as well _walk_. Sota gnashed his teeth and glanced outside the window, surveying the crowds of milling Joshes and the occasional clump of Nekus. Well, _they _certainly weren't gonna help him. And even if they would have, Sota wouldn't have let them. He hatedthose things... Sota reached over into the glove compartment, fiddled with it until it snapped open, and unearthed a bottle of cologne. He gave himself a gratuitous spray-down, and another one for good measure; only once he was suitably pungent did he open the door with a _clunk_ and finally slide out of the vehicle.

Now, Sota was no mechanic; having spent most of his childhood focusing on hairdressing and saving people, rather than fiddling with engines, this was no surprise. Well, whatever. He figured that giving the hunk 'a junk a good kick would get the motor running again or something. Right? Right. Cocking his foot, Sota prepared to give the poor truck the kickstarting of its life.

The pickup truck took one look at the three-inch spikes on Sota's totally-punked-out boots and found religion.

He was halfway through punting the vehicle right in the face, spiked treads whooshing forth like a pendulum of death, and then - "Gya-HURPH!" - there was a strangled yelp and suddenly Sota had been tackled by something small and skinny. Of course, the impact was kind of soft and Sota only staggered a bit, but it was enough to screw up the trajectory.

And piss him off. "WATCH IT, BRA."

The Joshua unit jumped up and smoothed his shirt out, looking pointedly uninterested in the pickup. "My apologies, sir, but _you're doing it wrong."_

"Doin' what wrong?" Sota attempted to wipe the Joshua germs off his side with the back of his hand, scowling.

"That is_ not how_ you treat a Red Pickup Truck oh dear you have to handle it with _love and affection _if you know what I mean oh dear oh dear," breathed the Joshua. He was definitely not looking anywhere near the busted-up vehicle, and appeared to be under some kind of strain because of it.

"What? Love and affection? This piece a' crap?" Sota and the truck had never been on very good terms with each other. "No sissy affection's gonna get this thing moving again, bra."

The Joshua's nostrils flared. "Crap? Oh nononono, my good sir, you are sorely mistaken. It just needs a little TLC, that's all. Did it, by any chance, break down?"

"Oh yah, man. It just, like, _died _in the middle of the road while I was gettin' some stuffs, yah?" (Sota was not the brightest, and he saw nothing wrong with telling the Joshua that his truck was broken, and contained enough groceries for two people.)

The Joshua's dark eyes lit up like Christmas trees. "Is that so? Do you think it might be..._engine trouble_, perhaps? Hmm?" He looked strangely excited by the prospect - exceedingly so, for someone who was so obviously uninterested in pickup trucks.

Sota shrugged, and decided to kill the conversation before his dumbness let any secrets slip. "Aight, get outta the way, creep. S'nothing I can't handle."

At that moment, the Joshua did a most peculiar thing. He straightened up and threw his arms out wide, almost as if he were shielding the pickup truck. "I am terribly sorry, Mr. Sota, but I cannot allow you to kick this vehicle." His eyes were solemn, his mouth a thin line, and he looked like he would rip Sota apart if he took another step.

The manguro blinked stupidly, not knowing quite how to react to this. "Uh..."

"Say...I'll help you fix it!" This bright exclamation flung itself from his lips before he could wrestle it into a more satisfactorily aloof shape, and the Joshua suddenly looked quite cross with himself. "...seeing as how you appear to be just as incompetent as you look. Hm? Well?"

"Fix it? NO," cried Sota, remembering the tampons and the sort of conclusions that would be drawn upon their discovery. If they found Nao...no! No no no! "NO, I can do it myself!"

"I wasn't asking you for permission, Mr. Sota." The Joshua only came up to Sota's chin, but he got up on his tippy-toes and disapproving-mothered Sota squarely in the eyes. Sota found this frightening, as it dredged up long-buried images of Mama, and...urk...let it suffice to say that they were long-buried for a Good Reason. Hell, Sota's hate/hate relationship with the pickup truck was like a _loving marriage _between two young, passionate sweethearts compared to his relationship with Mama. And when he looked at this Joshua...those eyes...agh! No! It was like the Freudian Excuse from the Black Lagoon! "So it would be best for all of us if you would kindly stay out of my way. Okay? Okay."

Sota nodded weakly, reduced to a vegetative state from the mere memory of her glare. "S-Sure. It's cool, ya?"

Joshua disapproved a moment more, and then cracked a smirk – a smirk that threatened to burst into a big, gleeful grin of sheer delight. The edges kept quivering, fluttering about like flags in a storm, and Joshua had to use all his might to keep it plastered onto his face. Not that he was excited about a pickup truck, because he most certainly wasn't. The Composer didn't have time for trite, idiotic frivolities such as pickup trucks! Pickup trucks were impractical; they ate up fossil fuel and got sucky gas mileage, and they contributed heavily to global warming. Besides, the Composer didn't need a car, He could just ghost about like an apparition. And an entity as girlishly effeminate as Yoshiya Kiryu didn't want anything to do with masculinity or any representation thereof. So ha.

At that moment, Joshua discovered he was suddenly elbow-deep in the inner workings of the pickup, covered in grease, a childish grin splitting his face. Hm. How odd. His grin widened, despite himself._ However _did this happen?

Sota observed this development with a strange, numb feeling blooming in his chest, like some kind of death lily. He prayed and prayed, to no specific deity, that the weird Mama Joshua would not go snooping around in places he shouldn't. _Oh, Nao...Ohh, my little Nao-Nao..._

A Neku unit came over and made noises of displeasure. "I don't recall_ this _being on the list of things to do."

"Oh, shut yourself," the Joshua tittered, fidgeting about gleefully. "Here, one sec...hand me your pen, would you?" He whipped a tatty pink book out of his back pocket and scribbled something down in it, distractedly. As soon as the pen stopped scratching he chucked the book at the Neku, who managed to catch it _juuust _before it compressed his face directly into the second dimension. "There. It's the shopping list. Go get that stuff, and meet me back at the motel. M'kay?"

The Neku fumbled with the now-greasy journal, examining the sloppily-written list crossly. "I can hardly read this crap, dude."

"Just think of it as a lesson in cryptology," the Joshua said breezily, waving the Neku off in the direction of AMX. He kept his measured countenance for as long Neku remained in the line of sight; but as soon as the purple-clad punk was gone, Joshua dove back into the pickup truck with a look of idiotic bliss shining from his every particle.

At this moment, Sota Honjo came to his senses. Okay. The Joshua was fiddling with his truck. This was...odd. Joshes are never straightforward, and so Sota assumed this was some new tactical plot designed to sniff out his Nao-Nao. Sota clenched his fists, knowing full well he'd do anything to protect her, anything to save her, anything, anything. He was a Hero at heart. And these Joshes were Villains, through and through. Heroes always kill the Villans. It's nature's way. Never mind that this weirdo was working on his truck, it was but a simple decision – save Nao? Or shyly back down, intimidated by an impression of your mother? What a no-brainer.

Sota reached into his sleeve and pulled out his hairdressing scissors, ready to slice this Joshua where was not civilly acceptable. _He was going to cut off his hair. _Yes, that's right. Although it disturbed his soul to do it, Sota was going to hack a few good clumps of the robot-clone-thing's fluffy blonde locks beyond all recognition. Sota was quite capable of operating at Zohan speeds, and so the deed could be done before the Joshua even noticed. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. _This must happen. _

He advanced, _snik-snikk_ing his scissors, the blades of which thirsted for the lifeblood of deceased keratin. Sota reached out to perform the first amputation – chop off that lightning bolt-shaped curl of hair, yes yes yes, and then move on to that ratty-looking ponytail – when the Joshua did something most unexpected. The clone sat up, saw the scissors, smiled brightly and...took them. He took them! Sota was baffled! Boggled! Utterly blown away! And what the Joshua did next...it was raw blasphemy! It was utter madness!

It was SPARDA!

Which stands for **S**ota's **P**ersonal most-**A**wful **R**eally-bad **D**ream in **A**lla' forever, yah?

I'm sure you'd like to know what that is, huh? Well, first you have to understand that for Sota, hair was serious business. He kept his styling tools in top condition, his fine combs fine, his shampoos shamazing, his conditioners con exellente, and so on. But Sota harbored an especially soft spot for his scissors. They were brand-new, aerodynamic, with diamond-edged blades made of titanium-platinum-alloy. Mandalas of intricate details were engraved upon the glossy surface of these blades, with handles carved from baby alicorn and inlaid with mother-of-mia (the sister of mother-of-pearl - for all intents and purposes, they're identical, except mother-of-mia is like, fifty-billion times sexier), custom-tailored to fit his fingers. They were mind-shatteringly expensive, and only intended for the use of cutting human hair.

And the Joshua had just taken them, ("Thanks! Just what I needed, mister!") and he was using them as shears. Shears! SHEARS! The goddamned thing was sticking Sota's precious scissors deep into the greasy, sludge-covered metal entrails of an eighty-year old pickup truck that hadn't been cleaned in ninety! Sota thought he might just drop dead right there on the spot, but he remembered Nao-Nao and found strength.

Presently, the Joshua looked up again and motioned for Sota to come near. Sota complied, if only because it'd be much easier to bash this faghat's brains out if he were closer. "Sorry I took your scissors, Mr. Sota, but I saw they were diamond-edged and couldn't help myself. You see, I needed to get rid of this piece of metal here...and thread a wire through here...because this whole section is hooked up wrong, seriously, I've seen this kind of thing a million times. It would be much more efficient if the hose went here, right?"

Sota nodded slowly, never taking his eyes off his precious scissies. "Yah."

"No, really, look at it."

Sota looked. "I don't like, get the problem, man."

Joshua saw fit to launch into monologue at that moment and tenderly explain the inner workings of the average Red Pickup Truck as clearly and concisely as he could. Joshua had a knack for sounding persuasive and smooth, despite his reedy voice (which punted most of the gravity out of anything he said) and soon Sota was quite up-to-date on Red Pickup Trucks and was almost as equally excited.

Please do not ask us how this happened; Joshua probably (by which we mean "definitely") imprinted on him with his watered-down Composerness or something like that. Nothing you mortals can replicate.

Before long there were two wannabe mechanics working busily on the pickup, eyes aglow with elation. The scissors lay forgotten.

* * *

Meanwhile, inside AMX, Neku had run into a spot of trouble.

AMX was supposed to be a music store. And it still was; there were rows and rows of CDs and MP3s, ABCs and 123s, all glittering with shiny newness. Racks of headphones everywhere, music players everywhere, posters and crap everywhere...the typical stock. But, in addition to this, there were stacks of what looked like laptops and computers; all manner of technology, piled in impossibly high heaps in the back of the store. It was kind of a mess. Exactly the kind of mess Neku loved to hole himself up in for hours on end, back in his Shibuya – he'd stay here for hours, listening to the sample tracks over and over until his brain cells started to dry out (dehydration was his cue to head home).

And so, of course, AMX was absolutely crammed with Nekus. There were practically hundreds of them - a purple sea with orange-capped waves, packed into the relatively small floorspace. Quite predictably, this led to elbows crossing the bounds of "personal space," kneecaps stuck where they shouldn't be, and eventually to all-out judo matches. Cries of "Outta my FACE! You're blocking my view!" and the like were quite common, and erupted with great frequency, like the calls of gulls at the oceanside. Fighting exploded in small, volcanic bursts - one Neku would get fed up with the lack of space, grab his neighbor by the collar, and wing him into a group, and it was disaster dominoes from there on. There were lines waiting to listen to sample tracks, lines waiting to pick out headphones...but since Neku liked to take his sweet time, this did not end well. Some Nekus had even dragged their Joshuas in to use as ladders – and swords, from the looks of one particularly unbelievable brouhaha going on in the middle of the store. Nobody looked happy at all.

Our Neku couldn't stomach the irony – _"all the world needs is me," _indeed.

Suddenly, our protagonist felt a peculiar mixture of emotion settle heavily in his innards – he felt superior, of course, because he had been put through that epic waste of time known as the Reaper's Game, and came out a better person. But...had he really acted like...like _that? _So acidic with anger he caused all base substances in a five-mile radius to implode into piles of salt?

Up until this point, Neku had never really thought about how much _exactly _the Game had changed him. Seriously, _what_ had be been smoking? Neku was swiftly beaten over the head with a bout of Shiki-esque self consciousness - the kind that always made him feel like a thirteen-year old girl, dripping in idiocy and bad fashion choices. Neku hid his face in his collar (despite the icy blasts of a/c, it was getting suspiciously warm in here) and kind of shuffled along the edge of the room, trying to get to the computers.

A laptop was first on the shopping list – or at least the first thing he had deciphered, since Joshua's kanji were more like black squares. Sigh. Well, it was tough going, especially since the Nekus seemed to want to shove everyone away, literally, including any poor saps trying to inch their way in and actually buy something. Our Neku's luck ran out about halfway, when he was suddenly grabbed and used as a meat shield against a very powerful dragon punch. Neku didn't take to this at all, and so whacked both clones with the power of justice – and suddenly, somehow, he was shanghaied into the whole mess. _Goddammit, I don't have the TIME_, Neku thought to himself, snapping a clone's neck with a hook-roundhouse combo kick. _Whoa, that was pretty sweet..._

He kicked some ass for a short while, then remembered he had to be doing Joshua's shopping. Neku grumbled, bemoaning the fall of his standards – but what could he do about it? He wanted to get out of this dimension like a cat in a rocking chair factory. Surely, he would not be the one to impede progress. Even though he kind of hated shopping in crowded stores with an intense, soul-consuming passion, and even though having to do this for Joshua was more than slightly irking. Oh, well. You can't win them all, can you?

Neku shoved his way out of the brawl and waded back into relative obscurity. He was not sorely missed – after all, there were a bazillion others almost-but-not-quite exactly like him to wail on, and the pleasure-per-punch ratio was exactly the same.

Well, anyway. In the back of the store were the laptops, the computers, the radios, the Christmas decorations, the Halloween decorations, the Hanukkah decorations (all three of them), and one thing that looked suspiciously like Kwanzaa propaganda. The percent of people who celebrate Kwanzaa in Japan is exactly none, mind you. There were piles and piles of toy robots scattered haphazardly about, cute pink EVEs and ugly plastic EVAs with kawaii desu cat ears. There were electronic air fresheners and dart guns, games of Mr. Twister and Egregious Rule-Breaking, Nintendo handheld DSi and 3DS and 4DS and 5Gs XXL 500 horsepower, and that Japanese toy that trucker's joy that everybody calls CB. All of this electric crap was stacked up neatly, and everything else was crammed in the little pockets of air between stacks, creating a wall of junk. This wall was quite imposing, and brought to mind images of incoming ships and tidal waves, of trash compactors and Harrison Ford stuck in the trash compactor and getting slowly crushed to death by the trash compactor of death trash compactor - and the fact that a flimsy web of police tape was the only thing keeping it from spilling into the floorspace in a deadly, sweeping tide of miscellaneous electronic junk did not help matters.

Neku took a deep breath, fumbled around for the book, and flipped to the pigeon-turd penmanship that was supposedly intended to vaguely resemble a shopping list. He needed a laptop. And an internet port-a-potty – wait, what? Oh, no, that said "porty-thingy."And the Schwartz – no, _quartz _crystal keyblade – wha..? No, no, that said key-_chain_ - a quartz crystal _keychain_ and...he'd work on decoding the rest later. A cornea can only take so much scarring in a minute.

Staring down the wall with his trademark "Blue Steel" death-glare, Neku inwardly thanked the gods for those weird rock-climbing lessons his aunt had dragged him to last year, and took a step forward.

He was immediately descended upon from every direction by holy avengers, eyes ablaze with glorious vengeance. _WHAT-!_

"DON'T TOUCH IT, MAN!"

"THIS IS A CONTRADICTION, YO!"

"Can't you THEE the poleethe tape?"

"Not groovy, man. Sooooo not groovy."

They tackled him to the ground and Neku wound up whacking his head (in the same spot as the lamp, headboard, and pavement had struck him today, naturally) against a rack of CDs. Neku's vision went spotty with shifting colors for a second, and he thought he saw a bizarre FACE leering at him, but in an instant he snapped out of confusion and regained competence.

Neku had been attacked by the AMX clerk and some other familiar faces, all dressed in the black-with-blue-trim shirts that made up the AMX uniform. Masanori Ito, with his thin face, short hair, and scraggly soul patch, was leader of the AMX campaign in the AMX vs. Towa Records flier war. Currently, he was stuffing fliers down Neku's throat and gargling incoherently. Even more incoherent was BEAT BITO, looking nigh-unrecognizable in jeans and an AMX shirt. There was a stunning lack of skull cap on his head, but he was wearing some freaky-weird orange shades – they looked like a giant plexiglass "W" perched on his nose, if that makes any sense. At present, the noise he was spouting was not even classifiable as language. The third of the attackers was a bespectacled lisping guy that Neku found extremely attractive. The last was – gods – _Shinta Iwata_, and he was beating Neku with a baby crocodile.

After all of this had been absorbed, Neku pulled a vortex saber-type spin kick sort of move, which managed to knock all of his would-be attackers flying in all directions and propel Neku to his feet. The flame-crested one assumed battle position, spitting out fliers, ready to bust some skulls.

The troupe of AMX employees regrouped quickly, but they did not rush him again. Instead, they started to...recite poetry.

Masa struck a martyr-like pose. "To protect the contraband from distribution!"

Sexy Glasses Guy suddenly leapt into the picture, only his pose was more romantic. "To deliver errant Playerth divine retribution!"

Shinta pirouetted into the weirdness. "So, like, we're protecting the peace and keepin' it groovy?"

"Don' believe in yourself, yo! Believe in MEEEEEEE-AT!"

"MASA!"

"ENOJO!"

"AKI!"

"TA!"

Masanori took the spotlight for a one-line solo. "Team MEAT, assemble and prepare to fillet..."

"WE GONNA BEAT YOU ASS UP, 'PHONES, SO _JUST_ _GO THE HELL AWAY!_"

"Glark!" said the baby crocodile, which meant approximately "Shut up!" in crocodilian. It just wanted to go back to the zoo...

Meanwhile, Neku had simply walked around the theatrics, pilfered a computer and a Wi-Fi USB connector thingy, and was now on his way to the checkout.

Beat rubbed his shoulder and looked smug. "Heh, look at him. He's fleecing in terror, man."

Sexy Glasses Guy whacked him on the back of his head. "No, no, you idiot! He _thlipped pathst our defentheths thomehow!"_

A look of comical horror exploded onto Beat's face with such force that he staggered backwards. "BWAAAAH-!"

Team Masa-Enojo-Aki-Ta was furious. How dare the Neku ignore their fear-inspiring introductory speech! Everyone knows you have to stay put through the introductory speech! It's the rule! The four of them exchanged glances, all thinking the same thing – _ATTACK. PATTERN. ALPHA. GO!_

Neku got about halfway to the checkout line before he was tackled again. This time, it was more like being mowed down by human Blue Angels. "Gaah!" The AMX employees hit him like a barrage of man-sized bullets, each attaching to a different limb; the momentum of it all sent the whole mess tumbling into the back of the store, away from any Neku clones – who were too busy out-emo-ing each other to notice, anyway.

As Neku clattered to the floor, the computer was knocked out of his hands and sent catapulting into the shadows, where it hopefully met a swift and painless death. Neku was NOT HAPPY. He winced, twisted around, and spat expletives at the AMX employees, who had managed to pin him to the ground again, only more organized – Beat at his left shoulder, Shinta at his right, and Masa crouched on his legs. The crocodile, left unattended, was trying to escape in the confusion, but SGG scooped it up before it could get away.

"Ngh—What the hell do you WANT?" Neku snarled, feeling a twinge of empathy for the poor crocodile, fellow prisoner that it was.

"You know the ruleth!" lisped SGG in his absurdly high voice. He sounded like a girl pretending to be a guy, completely ignoring the whole matter of larynx shape. Seriously, even _Joshua_, the wimpy prettyboy bishiemonster, sounded manlier than THAT. "All electronicth, thave for the thtandard ithsthue phoneth, are to be conthidered _contraband_, and are to be kept out of Player pothesthion for the durathion of the Game."

"Uh, why?"

"Beacauth..." The overly effeminate-looking boy suddenly froze up, blushed in embarrassment. "Well, I don't know, but..." He suddenly jumped and started flapping his arms around, like some sort of deranged goose. "W-w-we don't make the ruleth! We j-jutht...enforthe them! Yeah!"

Neku squinted at the "boy's" lanyard, hopping around his chest like a popcorn kernel, and wondered if it was severe Shiki withdrawals messing with his brain or...

"AMX and _that other place _are the two major music stores in Shibuya," Masanori explained from Neku's knees. He had unwisely been poking the tips of Neku's kneecaps, and now his finger was bleeding all over everything. Masa was clearly trying his hardest to not show that he was in pain. "They are also – urk – quite large, so they are the perfect places to store all of the electronics, confiscated from around Shibuya. You dig?"

"I dig," said Neku.

"I'm diggin' it!" Beat interjected, almost compulsively.

Nobody paid him any mind, because he said that all the friggin' time. Masanori continued. "You Players aren't allowed to have any electronics – apart from what you come with, anyway. Our job, as employees of one of the two storage sites, is to keep any _thieving scoundrels _from making off with the goods!"

There was a general murmur of agreement.

Neku scowled. "But I need this stuff, dammit!"

"It's against the rules," Masa said in a superior tone.

"Screw the rules! I have..." What _did _he have? it was time to pull a Phoeneku Wright and bluff like crazy - "..._evidence!_"

"Evidenthe? Evidenthe? What thort of evidenthe?" the bespectacled bifauxnen piped up, leaning over Masa's shoulder.

"Proof that I'm not a Player!"

Shinta shook his shaggy head, Afro flopping from side to side. "You have got to be a Player, man. I'm pickin' up some serious vibes. _Player vibes_."

"And apart from that, you have orange hair!" Masa pointed an accusing finger. "All Players are orange-haired!"

Thinking of Lollipop, Neku descended upon the flaw in this logic. "Ah, but not all orange-haired are Players. And besides...if you'll permit me the use of my arm, good sir..." Beat let go of his upper arm obligingly, and Neku welcomed the tingling rush of blood flowing back into his fingers. He reached back, bent his head forward, and brushed his hair up so they could see the nape of his neck – a rare sight indeed, when dealing with Neku Sakuraba. "...You'll notice my ugly black roots. I haven't bleached my hair for like, a week, so the natural color is creeping in. Were I a Player, my hair would probably not grow, so there would be no roots."

Team MEAT exchanged furtive glances, unsure of what to think.

"Furthermore!" said Neku. "I have no ID tattoo on my shoulder." He tugged the short sleeve of his shirt up a little to illustrate.

"Hmmm..." Masanori contemplated this for a moment.

"And finally – check my phone, if you want – I don't have any Game rules on it."

There was a brief lapse of silence, wherein Neku crossed his fingers. After a moment's hesitation, Masa called a group huddle. "Team MEAT, assemble!"

Neku couldn't exactly hear what they were whispering about over there, but it sounded imperative to his getting-a-computer. The four AMX warriors bickered, then whispered, then argued, then whispered some more, and then they were back to bickering again. The baby crocodile thrashed in the bespectacled bifauxnen's arms, snapping its jaws and glarking helplessly. The probably-not-a-boy hugged it tighter, almost as if it were a surrogate pig plush, much to the reptile's displeasure.

After some serious discussion and a nice application of democracy, Masanori Ito turned around to face Neku, arms folded. Slowly, the other members of Team MEAT turned in a dramatic fashion, until they were all facing Neku.

"Fine," said Masa stoically, arms akimbo. "We'll concede that you are not a Player, and so can legally be allowed to possess electronics."

_Just as planned_, thought Neku, then mentally smacked himself for thinking like some kind of supernatural mass-murderer.

"However! We're not sure what you are, exactly. You could be a trap, you could be some kind of decoy, sent by the Players to secure contraband..."

Neku felt a frustrated growl itching to rumble through his throat.

"...or any manner of strange things. But we will be willing to give you a computer..."

_Just as planned_, thought Neku, then mentally smacked himself for repeat offenses.

"...if – and only if – you can _beat us_."

"...What?" Whatever he had been expecting, it hadn't been that.

Cold, serious steel glimmered in each member of Team MEAT's eyes. "If you want a computer...you have to defeat all four of us...in battle!"

Neku's gaze flicked from teammate to teammate, assessing each in his head. Masanori Ito...he was a clerk at a music store. Not likely much of a threat, despite that overconfident stance. Beat...he was Neku's bestie, but Neku had been able to bring the pain on him several times before; and this wasn't the Beat_ he _knew, it was a weirdo Beat with orange sunglasses. The other glasses-wearer, if his suspicions were correct...well, it wouldn't be fun fighting this one, but if he played his cards right, maybe he wouldn't have to. And as for Shinta Iwata...who knew? But he was probably the same as Masa – not much of a threat. The crocodile...well, Neku would try to avoid the crocodile.

They were his friends...he knew these people. Maybe not Shinta, but...he knew them. But Neku reminded himself that this was a different world, a different time – here, he was nobody in the eyes of his once-friends. These people had just tackled him twice, and not in a playful way. They would not go easy on him. Neku himself had no emotional connections to these iterations of Beat, and Masa, and the bespectacled one. They were identical only in body – friends in form, strangers in minds. It all came down to Neku's emotions; would they get in the way? Would he have some sort of strange attack of the sappies? Neku looked within himself, and he found the answer.

Not likely.

He was still pissed about the thrice-whacking, after all.

Neku got to his feet and blasted Masa with his coldest death-glare, a cone of cold that spread to all of the members of Team MEAT, ensuring that they all got a healthy blistering of freezer burn.

"Bring it."

* * *

**A/N:** What's shaken? Not stirred! ...It's Japanese car inspection.

At the arcade, we have a few Japanese racing games. All untranslated, completely incomprehensible, and therefore extremely difficult to play. Even so, they still ask for quarters. |:^

You have to sit on this horse and rock back and forth, I think. I wasted six whole moneys trying to figure that out, which is obviously what the arcade wanted me to do. This is all part of their master plan to get moneys! They should feel ashamed, preying on poor children who just want to have a fun time at the Main Event! Everybody and their dog has their birthday party at the Main Event. (It's like this composite bowling alley, bumper cars, arcade, laser tag, and snack bar.) Not that I'm complaining, but seriously, laser tag is the only thing it's good for. I'm too young to drink booze and play Foosball in the "Dad Section," I suck at bowling without the rail guard, the video games are crap, and the prizes SUCK. Ah, well. Pizza, cake, and laser tag. That's all I need.

And now a darling bit of fanfiction penned by my little brother:

_Chapter one_

When Neku got lost in the woods everyone had to find food water or shelter. Neku said I found water from the stream . Sho said I found berries!. Beat said well I found a helicopter Hanekoma told beat no beat I told you to find food water or shelter things that would help us SURVIVE not things that would let us fly back to civilization. Well I also found a airplane. What did I tell you Beat. What about this house. Food water shelter Beat. What about these five bags of ice cold water. In one ear and out the other that beat. There was a starbucks five feet away with mega phones saying come get your coffee and a neon sign as big as a hippo that said starbucks coffee and Hanekoma said man I would kill for a cup of coffee right now.


	12. In which there is Much Action

_**JOSHUA TRIPS**_

CHAPTER TWELVE: IN WHICH THE JOSHES HAVE A NEKU

The Story So Far: Joshua and Neku have planar-jumped into an alternate dimension full of weirdo clone robot things. Neku helped Joshua realize that the current plot thread was kind of not important, and apparently Joshua has a plan to escape because of it – a plan that involves a crystal keychain, a laptop, and USB internet – but he got sidetracked by Sota's red pickup truck and now Neku has to do the shopping. This would be fine, were it not for the fact that Players (Nekus) are not allowed to have electronics – he'll have to prove that he's not a Player to several idiots and a baby crocodile in order to get a computer! How will he prove himself? Well, duh. Through violence, of course! I don't care what Rhyme thinks, violence is ALWAYS the answer!

Rating: Rated T for Terrapin.

OF NOTE IN THIS CHAPTER: Take a wild guess. You fangirls will be _so happy_...ugh...

Genre: Parody/Adventure

* * *

"Bring it."

No sooner had Neku Sakuraba spoken - Team Masa-Enojo-Aki-Ta cracked a synchronized smirk, a cocky display that reminded the Proxy of the Joshes. Neku felt a quiver of dread in the depths of his stomach, but he ground it into space dust the second it made itself known. There was to be no hesitation here. Neku knew how to fight, being a bit of an alley cat, and the first rule was to never show fear. Intimidation was half the battle. The instant he showed a flicker of weakness, the enemy would swoop in and beat him into a bloody pulp. No thanks. Neku kept his glare on its coldest setting, staring down the opponents.

There were four of them, if you'll recall from the last chapter; four fighters and a baby crocodile that looked extremely P.O.'ed about the current state of affairs. Masanori Ito, Shinta Iwata, Beat Bito, and a suspiciously feminine guy with glasses. They each exuded an aura of raw, undiluted cockiness, and Neku had a strange flash of premonition – suppose these guys...well, they were supposed to be "law enforcers;" didn't that mean they fought Nekus for a living...?

Neku swallowed. Weakness! All inner weakness must be eradicated. Yes, the team may have fought Neku clones for a living... but he wasn't like those other ones, now was he? From the looks on their faces, the members of Team MEAT didn't seem too aware of this fact. And he could use this to his advantage.

The two opposing parties circled each other for a moment or two, each waiting for the other to strike first, like a bizarre game of chicken. Neku slid easily into "battle mode;" he relaxed his muscles, stepped lightly on the balls of his feet, and opened up his senses. Observation. Observation of the enemy, observation of the battlefield. He took note of the slight irregularity in Shinta's steps, the close proximity of the shelves, and the distant cries and scuffles of the Neku clones. He took it all in, let the familiar electric feeling wash over him.

When it came down to it, it was just like a Noise Reduction. Only, he didn't have to scrub his opponents out of the fabric of reality. Well, that was a relief.

"Four against one?" he found himself saying. "That seems a little unfair."

"_Au contraire_, kid," drawled Shinta. "There's four of us, and five gazillion of you."

They remained at a stalemate for a few seconds longer – until it was rudely interrupted by a flying brick, closely followed by a flying Joshua, courtesy of the Neku clones – and it was as if the gun had gone off. Neku and Team MEAT charged forth at the same instant, each loosing a wild barbarian battlecry. "Haaa_aaaaghh!_"

Well, it started that way.

Glasses-guy duked left, Shinta duked right, and Masa dove between Neku's legs. Suddenly, Neku was the only one left, directly in the path of an incoming Beat Bito – the skater came at him like a bullet train, fists swinging and sunglasses glinting. Neku squeaked, jumped, twisted in midair; but even so Neku only _just _managed to dodge a third degree Beat-to-the-head, slamming into the ground back-first. Beat was thrown off-balance for a split second, but that was all Neku needed. He lifted his legs up, swung forward, used the momentum to launch himself into Beat's back, and sent him sprawling to the floor. One down.

No sooner had Neku managed to fell the first attacker when – _SCHWING! SCHWING!_ He had to snap his head back to avoid having his nose amputated by two throwing stars – no, wait, those weren't shuriken, they were...CDs? Neku barely had time to register the image of Masa, standing there, holding twin demonic CD-launching walkmen and grinning like a jack-o'-lantern, before – _SCHWINGSCHWINGSCHWINGSCHWING_ – he was forced to backflip away from an incoming battery of iridescent projectiles. He hit the ground, sensed someone coming from his right, and ducked just in time to dodge a dragon kick into the milky way. Shinta grumbled ("Not cool, bra...") and tried to follow up with a spinning crescent kick, but – Neku dodged that one too, took advantage of Shinta's weak leg, and slammed into the poor guy shoulder-first. Shinta's balance shattered like glass, and he went sailing to the ground. Neku stumbled, gasped. This was a lot more tiring than he remembered...

He straightened up and tried to get back in battle position – and suddenly, he was knocked over by a tremendous WHAP to the back. Neku hit the ground, shoved himself to his feet – and was WHAP'd again, collapsing to the floor. He rolled over, wincing, and took in his attacker – the glasses-guy, wielding a Yaoi paddle._ Well, I'll be dipped._ Neku noticed something at once - _Hey, he's using the uke side...!_

Hell hath no fury like a Neku hit by the uke side of a Yaoi paddle, and our Neku was no exception to this rule. He snarled, leapt to his feet, and tackled the glasses-guy like a starving tiger. Glasses-guy shrieked in surprise, slammed into the ground, had the wind knocked out of his/her lungs – and in that moment, Neku wrestled the paddle out of his enemy's clutches. He scrambled to his feet, gave the weapon an experimental swing...and proceeded to rain hell down upon Masa and Beat, cackling evilly to himself.

WHAP! WHAP! WHAP!

_I can see why people like these things. That sound is so satisfying..._ Neku's thoughts were oddly zenlike, contrasting sharply with the hurricane of fists he was trying to WHAP into submission. Beat finally managed to grasp the shaft of the goddamn thing and brought it down over Neku's kneecaps, cracking it in half. _Hey...!_

Neku glowered at the splintered rod of wood in his hand, tossed it over his shoulder. Useless.

"We gonna fight, we gonna fight like men," sneered Beat, spitting into the corner for emphasis. "Na' like friggin' Yowie fanrappers."

"...Whatever," said Neku, not quite understanding what a Yaoi paddle had to do with the rapping fans of Australian cryptids. Beatisms have a tendency to sometimes fly over your head in the thick of battle. "Let's get this over with."

Beat proceeded to own Neku ass for a few minutes.

"ARGH! Not this again," Neku moaned, crumpled into a vicious, unforgiving stranglehold. He recognized this maneuver from his little scuffle last night, and was unpleasantly reminded who exactly had done the deed.

"Yo man! You callin' me _particuble_? I've had it up to HERE with_ perictable!_" And Beat squeezed harder.

Beat squeezed Neku_ so_ hard that a curious thing happened. A crushing pressure built inside Neku's body, and WHAM – he went shooting out of Beat's grasp like toothpaste in a tube. "Ouch...well, that sentence sounded oddly dirty..." Neku grumbled crossly, staggering to his feet. He was sore all over, and he was getting tired. Conversely, his opponents barely had a single scratch on their collective personage. Neku needed a plan – _and fast_, he thought, dodging a swinging fist from Beat and tumbling out of the line of CD fire, only to be greeted by a tag-team bonk from Shinta and Glasses-guy, which was only avoided by a hair-thin margin.

This was getting ridiculous.

"That's odd. You Players – _huff _– are usually – ugh, _hold STILL_ - crying Uncle by now," said Masanori, casually trying to cut Neku with a spinning buzz saw-esque CD.

"I told you, I'm not a part of this idiotic Game!" Neku protested, dodging the blow with a sort of trip-stumble. To his credit, he managed to make it look intentional.

The boy barely managed to get up before he had to duck again. "C'mon, kid. Give it up," Shinta drawled, launching a stellar flurry of jabs at Neku's poor abused head with a bored expression on his scrubbly face.

Neku backhanded Shinta viciously in the guts, sending him sprawling. ("You messed up my groove, man! You gotta respect_ the groove!_") He sweep-kicked Masa's feet out from under him, jumped over the clerk, and tackled the approaching bespectacled threat. "Seriously, how long do I have to fight you guys?" he croaked, throat dry. Glasses-guy looked at him with hatred brimming in those liquid brown eyes, and Neku felt an inexplicable wave of despair.

"How long...?" Glasses-guy repeated blankly. "Until we beat you, duh!"

Neku suddenly felt a sharp crack of pain in his shoulder – the numb connection of a solid hit, followed by a bloom of mind-engulfing flames. Arms weakening, resolve weakening, Neku allowed himself to be kicked off of the Glasses-guy's chest and onto the cold, gritty tile. He lay there, trying desperately to get to his feet – but he couldn't. He just couldn't.

A ring of faces closed in around him – Shinta's cold look of disapproval, Masa's disgusted sneer, Beat's smug grin, and Glasses-guy's expression of purest loathing. They hated him. They _hated_ him. "Neku Sakuraba" meant nothing; he was just another one of those clones to them, wasn't he? Neku groaned feebly and shut his eyes, unable to get up. Unwilling, maybe.

The truth was, the idea that Neku's friends would hate him for being Neku was...painful. Neku hadn't really felt the full force of it until he saw the look, the _look _in Glasses-guy's eyes; as if he were a filth-encrusted rodent of unusual size. Considering who Neku suspected Glasses-guy might be, this was particularly soul-crushing.

And so, Neku closed his eyes, braced himself, and waited for the beating to come.

Only, it didn't. Neku cracked an eye open.

The members of Team MEAT were still staring at him in disgust, but it was...different. Incredulous disgust. And Masanori had extended his hand to the confused boy, as if proposing a peace treaty.

Neku tentatively reached up and took the offered hand, and Masa helped haul him to his feet. Neku blinked owlishly, bewildered.

"The trutfh ith," lisped Glasses-guy after a moment of awkward silence. "Out of all the Nekuth..."

"You're the only one we've ever fought," Masa finished, looking a little uncomfortable. "See, the other ones just listen to our introduction, scowl, and stomp away, but...we..."

"We trained hella hard anyway, man," Beat put in. "All the time, working on our attack stretcheties, jussin case they might try somethin'...but we never got to use any a' them."

"'Till you came." Shinta stroked his stubble thoughtfully. (He did not look as strangely accepting as the others; this may or may not have had something to do with the backhand.)

"And, uh..." Masa fidgeted self-consciously. "Well, we don't exactly know the protocol for this...so..."

"Thith ith unprethedented!"

"Totally."

"Dunno what's happenin' to this world, yo."

Masanori sighed and awkwardly patted Neku on the shoulder. "I'm sorry. I guess we got a little excited in the heat of the moment, y'know? But, what I'm trying to say here is, uh...thanks."

"Thanks?" Neku was a little rattled by the abrupt 180-degree turn things had taken.

Glasses-guy nodded. "Yeah, thankth! Although, I'm gonna have to carve a new paddle..."

General murmurs of agreement all around. Masanori shrugged. "We were getting a little...stressed, I get. Dissent in the ranks, right? We needed this."

Neku did not know quite what to make of this development...but then he remembered that one time, when he, Beat, and Shiki had gone camping...and it all made sense. On that particular adventure, things had started out smoothly enough; but, after a certain amount of time in the company of anyone – friend or foe, or even partner - you begin to get irritated. It's only natural. In fact, Neku had spent the majority of his Game in a constant state of irritation, the levels varying from day to day and reaching an apex midway through Joshua's week.

The team had obviously begun to get fed up with each other's company. They needed to make common cause against something, rekindle the old bonds, and all that. Neku nodded sagely; after all, this was all covered in section 3a of _Friendship for Sociopaths_.

"I gotcha," he said.

"Good, good. No hard feelings, right?" Masa grinned. "We still hate the Nekus, but...only the ones who treat us like we don't matter. You...I guess you're okay." Masa threw a glance over his shoulder at his teammates. "Right guys?"

General murmurs of agreement. The AMX clerk turned back to Neku and grinned. "See? S'okay. You can hang."

"I don't need to hang," Neku said, suddenly remembering his whole reason for being here. "I need to buy a computer!"

Team MEAT exchanged glances. "Well...maybe we can bend the rules. Just this once."

* * *

Through the combined efforts of our Joshua and Sota Honjo, the pickup truck was repaired. Nay, it was improved! The Composer worked his fancy magic all over the truck's inner workings, and in no time the engine was purring like a kitten.

Well, sort of. The guts of the pickup were strangely a lot more complicated than the model one Josh had at home. He had to call in Sota's help, but Sota had no idea, having focused all his time on hair-cuttery. They stuck their hands in and poked around a little, but neither of them really wanted to mess with anything. In fact, Joshua was a little worried about that one wire he'd rerouted. Of course, he didn't show it, and Sota remained none the wiser. Both the manguro and Joshua got covered in icky grease up to their elbows, and soon their shirt and pants legs were smeared with black gunk, much to their collective dismay. Joshua insisted that they take a break, and one break turned into many when Josh discovered the box of butterscotch candies hidden amongst the groceries. It probably wasn't the best idea to eat them with greasy hands, so Josh had to defile his jeans with black goo repeatedly. Oh, well. The denim was dark enough to handle a few smudges. He really couldn't summon enough pissiness to care; after all, he was nestled in the old, warm-smelling cabin of a Red Pickup Truck, the worn upholstery soft on his hands, a butterscotch sweet melting delicious sweet-salty flavor all over his tongue, with the added security of grocery bags piled around him like a plastic bag fortress. Joshua closed his long-lashed eyes in bliss. Life simply did not get much better than this.

Well, it did; but you gotta take what you can get, you know?

Speaking of the grocery bags, Joshua discovered many things of interest while snooping around in them. For one thing, there was a box of tampons. ...Weird. But more importantly, there was a small plastic container of adhesive medical strips, a tube of Neopetsorin, and a bottle of Smilinol cold & allergy relief. While Sota was standing around outside, trying to puzzle out the inner workings of a Red Pickup Truck, Joshua took a moment to get his face fixed up in the rear-view mirror, redo his messed-up ponytail, and popped a couple of pills while he was at it. Blehh. Josh hated medicine, but..at least it was better than shedding his stomach lining out through his nose. Then, he hopped out and went to help Sota – judging from the way the tall guy was glaring at the motor, the Imprinting was wearing off.

A little while later, they were taking yet another break. Sota sat in the driver's seat, gunning the motor with a look of satisfaction sitting on his face, despite the fact that they really hadn't done anything but move a wire. The door was flung wide and Joshua was sticking his ponytailed head in; however, his pitiful height did not complement the elevated pickup's, and his eyes were darting around barely a centimeter above Sota's knee.

"She works," breathed Joshua, smiling stupidly. He'd always _wanted_ to say that.

"She works, yah?" said Sota, grinning with an equal amount of blissful idiocy. It wasn't too out of character for him, because Sota was kind of a dip.

"Mmm..." Sucking on his seventeenth butterscotch candy, Joshua suddenly had a brainwave. "Hey, Mister Sota, could we...you know...'take her for a spin?'"

Sota patted the seat next to him, the seat covered in grocery bags. "Sure thing, little bro. Hop on in!"

Joshua stifled a squeal of glee and composed himself. He tried to crawl over Sota's knees while keeping his air of cool dignity, but by this point it was pretty much only out of habit.

"Where to?" Sota asked, shutting the door and grinning artificially. The corners of his mouth twitched uncertainly.

Joshua Imprinted with all his might. This Sota guy wanted him out. If only he was back in his own world, this wouldn't be a problem...ever wondered why so many red pickup trucks seem to be driving around in that Game? "Oh, I don't know. Maybe just...drive around a little?" He smiled his starriest smile and hoped that his childishly weak brainwashing would pull through.

It did. "Cool," said Sota, the flickering resistance in his eyes melting away. Joshua breathed a sigh of relief. Thank goodness Neku wasn't here, or he'd be preaching all over the place about how Imprinting is mind control and mind control is wrong. The poor purple punk had no idea that his personal hero was somewhat of a pro-Imprinting activist, one who mixed his spray paints with generous amounts of the ESPer equivalent of MSG. …And anyway, Joshua had never ridden in a pickup truck before. His scavenger nature prevented him from missing an opportunity such as this.

Sota started the truck for real this time, and it roared to life with the most pleasing of guttural rumbles, lunging forward prematurely. Joshua felt his seat vibrate jerkily, felt his cheeks pull back into a clownish grin. _This – was - awesome_.

The truck rumbled along for a little ways, almost painfully slow. The Joshes milling about in the street took notice and fled for their lives, dragging their Nekus along like they were enormous, fussy handbags. Joshua didn't let that bother him and instead focused on how wonderfully high he felt right now. When the street was mostly clear, Sota grabbed the clutch shift or some other car mechanism and plowed onward at a more normal speed. (The author doesn't know how to drive, but neither did Joshua, so everything's okay.) The truck was of the age that every bump and crease in the asphalt translates into a startling jolt in the chassis, and Joshua relished every one with an almost weird feeling of pleasure soaring in his heart. "Hee, hee...it's bouncy!" Joshua clamped his mouth shut to prevent any more idiocy escaping the confines of his soul and further defiling his public image. But hey, the kid liked to bounce. It was the closest thing he could get to jumping, after all.

Familiar buildings rolled by, enmeshed in unfamiliar rose-vines. AMX gave way to Tipsy Tose Hall gave way to Shibu-Q Heads...and then Udagawa. And there, Joshua was slam-dunked back into reality with a jolt.

"S-stop the car!" he cried, jumping up. Sota hit the brakes, but Joshua had already jumped ship and was running. Running, running, running. Ugh. This was so tiresome.

But it was necessary. Joshua clambered up the steps, dashed past the Cyco Records store, past the Wild Boar outlet, and scrabbled up towards the CAT mural.

Or what was left of it, anyway.

A shimmering wall of rippling amber sliced rudely across the Udagawa backstreets, as if the sky had decided to stop here. It fluctuated and rippled like a mix between heavy fabric and mercury, crackling with a yellow haze of static electricity. But that was not the thing that commanded Joshua's attention. No, it was the mural. The mural, standing just outside of the golden wall, was a crumbling wreck – the shattered, dirty skeleton of a concrete rainbow. The colors that Josh could make out through the sheet of translucent gold were faded, brown, streaky. They looked...melted, somehow. And look – Joshua strained his eyes to see through the thick yellow lens – the rest of the city was no better. Drifts of sand nestled between barren, twisted ribs of iron, chunks of asphalt littering the ground like splatters of blood, broken buildings slashing the sky like jutting fangs...and there was not a soul to be seen.

"What happened?" Joshua muttered to himself, practically pressing his nose against the golden wall. It was like the world had ended. And yet, Shibuya remained...protected, perhaps, by this golden force-field thingy?

Joshua wrinkled his nose in disbelief, thinking of the Ikebukuro and Shinjuku Composers, who used to pull his gorgeous hair and speak to him in baby-talk every time he had to go to ComposerCon. What had happened to them...? And then, of course, he thought of the Composers of all other parts of Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka...and all of Japan, and all of Asia, and all of the world...and the Realgrounders, the Undergrounders, the Players, the Reapers, the Producers - hell, even the Noise...

No, no. Surely – surely the entire world had not been wiped out. Maybe it was just...over here. Maybe...

But from here, looking at the lonely devastation of Udagawa through a shimmering golden-glass guillotine, it sure felt otherwise.

Joshua stared at the parched remains until he could bear it no longer. He turned around to go back, but, for the final shock of the afternoon, Sota had left. Well, Joshua _had_ kind of barged in without asking...and eaten half the box of butterscotch sweets...and crawled all over his truck, reconnecting wires and flexing his brainwashing muscle...Joshua groaned.

_Welcome to karmic retribution, Joshy. Oh, heaven, I need some tennis shoes._

_

* * *

_

Back in the Pig Sigil Motel, something was happening.

Or about to happen, anyway. Sitting alone in his motel room, Neku N788-9567 could feel it – growing in his brain circuits, that strange, budding feeling of paranoia.

These days, it always took hold of him when he was alone; stinging petals of fear, blossoming in his chest like a poisonous night-lily. He was always so scared, so lonely.

Why? It had to be those other Neku units. He hated the other Nekus, he _hated_ them – they were a constant reminder of the inescapable faults, a million fragmented reflections of his worst qualities. Being an easily annoyed, angry loner was hardwired into the "Neku" personality program. You couldn't _change _it, no matter what your emotional center – your "_heart,_" as it was described in those compilations of scannable information, those things known as _books_ – wanted. He couldn't open up to people. He couldn't be nice to the Realgrounders, he couldn't make _friends_.

N788 just had to exist with the knowledge that he couldn't change, that he wasn't special at all. He was just another one of the Neku drones, just another sheep in the herd, with the same personality and appearance as everybody else. He existed to amuse Joshes, to give them points. He was a clone. There was nothing unique about him, nothing special, nothing important. He was worthless, really.

And so, he lived with the constant fear that he would be scrapped and tossed away like the worthless piece of junk he was. The clone was inconsequential, after all; it would only be a matter of time before he was "had," whatever that meant. Nobody would even notice he was gone, would they? There were a million others exactly like him. He would be erased without ever knowing what it was to be appreciated, without ever knowing what it felt like to be powerful and exciting and unique. Without ever knowing what a _friend_ was, that desirable of desirables. How awful. It filled him with a lonely sort of melancholy. (Existential angst was also a key part of the personality program.)

The Neku clone sat cross-legged on his bed, tugging at his bangs idly. He was staring out the window, but not processing any of the visual data; no, N788's calculations at the time were more of the introspective kind. He had lasted for roughly four months in the Game, according to his internal clock, but he hadn't gotten a single Joshua yet. He knew that _he_ had to obtain points if he wanted to Win. The Joshes had to be erased in order to obtain points. It was all very simple. They were The Enemy.

And yet...the Joshes...

They...when they talked to him, they said illogical things. They said he was delicious, mouth-watering, desirable. _Him _- out of every Neku in the Game, they chose _him_. They thought _he_ was a desirable. By that logic, all other Nekus should have been desirable, but the Joshes only seemed to care about N788, about _him_. They brought him cheesecake, they brought him the tasty Mako Synergy drink, they brought him smiles and kind words and soft laughter and admiring eyes. They made him feel...special. Wanted. Desirable. Unique. _Desirable_.

Laying in their arms, in their adoring eyes, N788 couldn't help but feel like the king, the idol, the center of the solar system. They thought he was special! They chose _him!_ To be important to someone, to _matter_...that was the Most Desirable Thing, was it not? It did not matter that the Joshes were The Enemy. They were his...they were his friends.

He liked them. They were nice to him, they were good to him. N788 smiled to himself, a strange action that felt weird in his face muscles. He didn't do it often; after all, it was not required by his personality program.

N788 did not feel very safe without his Joshes. He was lonely and scared without his Joshes surrounding him, he felt worthless without his Joshes telling him he was _special_ and _important_. He felt lonely and scared right now, but the simple act of remembering his Joshes's faces was enough to make him feel a little better. It was not very hard, because they had only one face between the six of them. He smiled again at this thought, because it was a silly thought; all of his Joshes were different, even though they had the same face. One of them was kind of shy, one of them did all the baking, one of them was kind of mean but had a soft heart, one of them was really good at massages, one of them was just plain _nice_, and the last one was sort of like the leader. Friends!

The Neku clone laid down on his bed, smiling to himself yet. He was staring at the ceiling, but not processing any of the visual data; no, N788's calculations at the time were more of the introspective kind. He had lasted for roughly four months in the Game, according to his internal clock, but he hadn't gotten a single Joshua yet. So of course he had no way of knowing.

N788 heard a knock on the door, and sat up quickly. Who was that? His Joshes were the only ones that held him in any regard, but the receptionist Joshua sometimes came by to ask if he was Doing Okay. N788's careful smile turned into a grimace, because that _annoying_ receptionist always pinched his cheeks. The Neku clone decided to go check through the peep-hole - if his visitor was the receptionist Joshua, he would definitely not open the door; but if it happened to be his Joshes, then he would! Ha-ha!

He pushed himself off the bed with a rustling of sheets and padded over to the door busily. So, then. Getting up on his tip-toes and peering through the little round window, he saw, with no shortage of delight, that there were six Joshua units standing outside. N788 quickly undid the latch and threw the door wide, smiling nervously. "Hello, Joshes."

"Hello, Ne~kun!" they sang in chorus.

N788 let them inside and closed the door, still smiling. "What brings you here today?" he asked.

The Joshes didn't go over and sit on the bed, like they usually did. They stood, grouped in the middle of the room, a synchronized smirk plastered on their flawless faces. N788 noticed dimly that one Josh was missing. Huh.

"Well, Nekky-dear," said the usually-sixth Joshua. "Actually, we're here...because of you."

"So, did you just come by to say 'hi' or something?" N788 blinked slowly, tipping his head, a kittenish look coming about him.

"Oh, no, no, no." All of the Joshes shook their heads in unison. "No, darling. No!"

Josh #6's smile widened. "This is a _special _occasion." It was strange that the eerily wide grin did not seem to reach his eyes.

"Very, _very_ special, Nekky-dear!"

N788 felt a fog of confusion roll in over his mind. "Why? What's going on...?"

The Joshes began to advance upon him, smiling and tittering. "This is a very special day, indeed!" They kind of pushed him backwards, away from the doors and windows, away from the available exits. N788 walked along obligingly, still feeling very confused – what were they doing? This wasn't like them...but...they just looked so serene, it was hard to not let yourself be swept up in their current. They made him feel so relaxed. Usually they all sat on the bed, because that was more comfortable, but hey - maybe they were going to do something new.

The Joshes were all talking at once. "Today is the day..."

"...the day that we fulfill our claim!"

"...the day our pact becomes complete!"

"...the day we achieve absolute unity!"

"Hee, hee!"

N788 didn't know what that meant, or why they insisted on pushing him back against that wall. They pressed against him from all sides, eyes wide and pupils black, hot breath tickling his skin sensors in puffs. He fidgeted uncomfortably. Something was wrong...

"Wh-what are you doing?" he blurted, feeling a very abrupt and unwelcome pinch on his thigh. Hey, there was no need for-

Josh #6 sidled up to him, draping his slight self over the Neku unit's chest with a strange light shining in his eyes. N788 quivered at the contact, curling back against the wall - cringing away from those strange _eyes_ – only to have his face tenderly cupped in his friend's hands. "We're taking back what is ours, dear," said the clone, his pretty pink lips curling into a fond smile. He stroked N788's cheek lovingly, running his carefully sharpened nails over the Neku's soft, soft cheeks.

All of a sudden there were hands all over him, stroking his arms and his abdomen and his chest-

N788's eyes fluttered closed, and he inhaled sharply. Wh-what...this was...definitely...new... His sensors were sending colorful bursts of sensation all across his mind's eye, strange spidery feelings were tickling up and down his backbone – but something was wrong, so wrong...

...So why did it feel so _right?_

"This is what you were built for, my dear," Joshua #6 whispered, smiling sweetly. He cradled N788's face in his cold, gently humming hands, stared lovingly into the Neku's eyes for one long moment, and with one swift wrist motion and a sickening _crack_ he snapped the clone's neck.

A faint glimmer of surprise flickered in the Neku's eyes for an instant and froze. The impatient rubbing ceased, cold Joshua hands resting on select patches of skin.

"Alright, boys." Joshua #6 surveyed his salivating, twitching comrades with approval. "Have at it."

Immediately, the pack activated. Their pupils dilated so wide their eyes looked black; their nostrils flared; their skin crumpled and stretched as their lips twisted back in impossibly wide grins, full of glittering teeth. The Joshes seemed to become one, a bloodthirsty hydra of the deep and the dark. A ring of predator smiles bore down on the Neku with lightning speed, fangs ripping cloth away, nail-talons puncturing the skin and digging deep in the flesh, the delicious, delectable, delightful flesh full of all that rich red blood...

Joshua #6 took a step backward and sat down on the bed, trying to keep himself from activating. Despite his desire to join his fellows and rip this ugly cattle apart - to shovel handfuls of velvety, bloody Neku meat into his mouth, savoring the acid taste; to drink richly of the pus and fat that lingered tantalizingly below the skin; to lick the lining from the intestines and chew the marrow out of cracked-ivory bone – he could not indulge himself, not tonight. Pamela, beautiful, beautiful Pamela had called for his presence. It was custom to fast for a day prior to an audience with the Rose Maiden.

It was quite a shame that the Neku was scheduled for today; Joshua #6 had been quite looking forward to having this one. In only a few moments, the rest of his pack had shredded every scrap of clothing on the Neku's body, huffing irritatedly. ("I just _despise _the shells, don't you?") The gangly corpse slumped against the wall, limp and white and fragile, the ID tattoo harsh against his milky skin. Red cuts on his arms from the Joshes' antsy fingernails stood out like hateful black marks, oozing beads of still-warm blood. And the smell! The smell of it alone was so tantalizing – metallic and salty, it curled into your throat like cotton, almost until you could feel sheets of it clotting on your tonsils in wormlike trails. Joshua #6 sighed wistfully, watching his packmates salivating over the Neku.

They took off their own clothes – didn't want the blood to spot them, now, did they? They dumped the Neku's limp, lifeless form upon the dirty floor, where he lay like the corpse of a young white calf. Nobody would notice a few extra stains on the already-scab-colored carpeting; anything and everything would be swallowed up by the sea of filthy wine-red. The Joshes flexed their fingers, prepared to put their specially-sharpened nails to good use –

- and fell to bickering almost at once.

"All right, since it's my turn, I get to-"

"_I beg your pardon?_ It's _my _turn to have the first bit!"

"No, no! It's mine!"

"Oh, come off it, you _pig! _You had half the last one, fat bitch that you are, and you drooled all over the cheeks-"

"_You're_ the pig, Twoey! You're _all _pigs! When was the last time_ I _got to have the first part of one of these things, hm? It's been _months_-"

"HEY!" shouted Joshua #6. His packmates all jumped and looked at him crossly, with their black, soulless eyes and shark mouths. "You're acting like children! All of you, children!"

Josh #2 bared his fangs, growling. A glimmering strand of saliva spilled over his lip and dangled freely, swinging back and forth like a pendulum. "_Children _this and _children_ that! What does that word even _mean_, dumb bitch?"

"Shut up, you insubordinate sack of aphid diarrhea. Three-three had it last time, so it's-"

"Don't act like you're the leader, you dumb bitch! You don't even know what half the words you use mean, do you?"

5 patted 2's shoulder gently. "That word, _children_, it doesn't _mean_ anything, Twoey-"

2 smacked 5's hand away with a snarl, face twisting in a grotesque fashion. "I don't care! He's a _dumb bitch _and he orders me around! I always have to bake that goddamn cake and fidget like a snot-nosed _children_, and I hate it!"

"It's getting cold, ladies," snapped 3, resting his hand on the Neku's stilled abdomen and digging his nails in ever-so-slightly. This was, of course, completely unacceptable.

"Hey!"

"Get your disgusting bitchhands off my dinner, you repulsive-!"

"If you so much as _touch_ it, I'll have you too!"

Joshua #6 tried to regain order from his place on the bed. "Will everyone _please_-"

"Shut up, we're fighting!"

"Fatass!"

"Dumb bitch!"

At that moment, the door opened.

Everyone froze.

Joshua #1 stumbled into the room, looking rather windswept. His cheeks were a healthy pink and his breath came in unsteady, jagged gasps. "Sorry...I'm..._huff_...late reporting, ran into a rather troublesome situation by AMX – some kind of swordfight, _complete_ idiocy – _huff_ – had to bail, you know. I hope I didn't miss any...thing...?"

His voice trailed off into a corner and died a lonely death in the back of his throat as he took in the scene – four activated Joshuas hunched over a Neku unit, one that was quite obviously dead. At the sight of the surprised expression frozen on the Neku's face, Josh #1 underwent a most peculiar transformation; his eyes opened wide and scared, the color drained from his cheeks, his grip on the door handle grew weak, and his entirety began to tremble. The poor Joshua tried to scrape a sentence together, but his efforts were pitiful. "O-oh...you're...oh...I hope I'm not...interrupt...ing..."

Almost at once, Josh #6 got a very nasty idea. "No, actually. You're just in time, dearie." A wicked, jagged grin sliced his face in two as he beckoned with a sharpened fingernail. "Come here."

Josh #1 hesitated a moment, almost as if he were considering running away; but he shuffled over towards the bed, closing the door behind him. Josh #6 noted that the freshie's face was almost as ashen as his hair.

"You haven't been with us long enough to have had a Neku, have you? Well, here's how we do things in our pack – we have a sort of...tradition." 6 reached out and slid his fingers around 1's wrist, gently pulling him closer. The dazed unit tottered forth, blinking rapidly, almost as if he were trying to keep his eyes from watering. "You see, every time we have a Neku...we let a different Joshua go first and have his fill. When he's finished, the rest of us go in and finish the erasure. In order to make sure that our points are evenly distributed, we take turns going first. Does that make sense?"

1 nodded dumbly.

"We typically go in numerical order, but..." 6 cast a reproachful look at his packmates, who were too busy salivating to pay him any mind. "...since we can't decide who went last, I figured we'd just start over."

The implication of this seemed to hit 1 square in the face.

"Seeing as how you're the newbie, and taking your freshness into account..." 6 smiled wickedly, eyes glittering.. "Well, it's your lucky day. After this, you will be a full-fledged member of our pack. Think of it as a show of...trust."

To split points with another pack was to sever any old pact and replace it with a new one. That was how Joshua units worked – they synced up with whoever they split a point with, on a most-recent basis. This, the simple act of splitting a point with the rest of 6's pack, would end Joshua #1's spying operation for good. It was such a simple solution; elegant in its brilliance, in 6's opinion.

The authoritative Joshua unit glared pointedly at his pack members, and they all backed away from the Neku's body, albeit reluctantly. Even 2 retreated into the shadows, looking mutinous.

"Go on," said Joshua #6. "He's all yours."

Joshua #1 looked at the Neku's body, then back at 6, then back to the Neku again. He took a deep breath, and – he seemed to come to a decision, drawing a deep breath as he kneeled next to the fragile-looking body.

In the dark room, in the dark moment, the Neku looked almost porcelain. 1 clenched and unclenched his hands, staring.

"Go on," 6 repeated, an edge of irritation creeping into his voice.

1 swallowed hard, gaze unwavering. In the mind of Joshua #1, there was a voice. A face. A memory. A million memories, snapshots and snatches of another time, another world...a friend...a Game...and silly, trite pasttimes...

The Neku stared back with vacant blue eyes, colored-glass irises, soft factory-grown skin.

They weren't the same. They weren't. But they looked the same, breathed the same, with the same face, the same DNA. But they weren't the same. This Neku was a conglomeration, a cyborg, a mannikin, a cattle. It was an object. A cattle. It was the livestock of this world, nothing more.

But at the same time, _he_ wasn't. And the memories...Joshua #1 closed his eyes, chewed the inside of his mouth.

"We're _waiting_," drawled 2 in his horribly identical voice.

The Neku laid prone.

A heavy silence swallowed the air.

"...Oh! I see the problem!" Joshua #6 spoke loudly, with false cheeriness. "Your nails are too short! You'll never be able to win a point with little nubs like those."

Joshua #1 jolted. "...Hm? Oh, y-yes..." His nails _were_ short, but guys weren't supposed to grow them long.

"Here you go," 6 said, reaching into his pants pocket. He produced a jackknife, the kind you might use to open boxes after moving into a new house. "For making life easier."

"Th-thanks," 1 mumbled, accepting the knife with a sour feeling blooming in his guts. For the first time, he realized – really realized – that there was no way out of this situation.

He took a deep breath, looking at the smooth, white skin. "I'm sorry," he mumbled, almost inaudible. He clutched the knife in a trembling hand, squeezed his eyes shut, and cut-

He cut-

He cut-

The skin stretched for an instant, but the sharp knifeblade punctured through without too much trouble. Before he could think, Joshua #1 grabbed the hilt in both hands and gave a fearsome yank to the right. The soft, wet sound was hideous, and his hands were suddenly drenched in a warm, warm, rust-scented wetness...

Despite every fiber of his being shouting _NO_ at the top of its lungs, Joshua #1 released the knife and slid his hands in through the opening to the ventral cavity. It felt soft and moist inside, full of velvety things and squishy things that made _shluck_ noises every time he moved, and Joshua #1 tried his hardest to not picture the organs as he felt them.

The smell blooming from the incision was awful; the smell of raw meat, all moist and damp and rusty in his nostrils. He just grabbed the first thing that didn't feel too gruesome and pulled it out – there was a lot of it, and Joshua #1 had to give it a vaguely annoyed yank. The thing came out with an ugly-sounding series of slippery noises, and all of a sudden Joshua #1 was holding something soft and bloody and terrible in his hand.

Despite every neuron in his brain screaming _NO_ at maximum volume, Josh #1 cracked his eye open. He immediately wished he hadn't, because the thing he'd grabbed just happened to be a rather pale section of what was - unmistakably - an intestine. Smooth and slippery, it was covered in slimy fluid, with a latticework of blood vessels tracing over its glistening surface. It was still warm.

It looked like the bloated, white corpse of some giant worm, like something that had decayed in water - all soft and dead and swollen in places. The thing gave off a powerful smell, of wet meat and _wrongness_ – all warm and pale and wet...

...and now, Joshua had to put it in his mouth. _Merry fuckin' Christmas,_ he thought dully.

Now, the small intestine, if you'll recall, is a tube that is all folded up inside your abdomen. If you were to untangle it, it would be much, much longer than you are tall. It's lined with scores and scores of tiny, fleshy polyps, called filli, which exist to suck the vitamins out of your vomit so it can become crap. The small intestine is full of fluid and bile and partially-digested food, and it is connected to the large intestine. The large intestine is a crap factory. Now, feces, aside from the obvious ickiness, is raw waste. It has nothing in it but toxins, bacteria, etc. - everything your body does not want, it packs into one smelly package which is then disposed of. You are NOT supposed to eat it. Perhaps an even worse menu choice is the actual organ itself – its wet, membranous walls have touched every. Single. Piece. Of crap. That has ever been crapped. By an individual. And then there's the whole question of the things that live in the intestines – E. coli bacteria by the millions, for one thing – and the possibility of tapeworms, those white parasites that can make a man abstain from fettuccine indefinitely...

Joshua #1's head was full of a more-or-less identical paragraph, and then some. The general collateral was a powerful nausea. And the fact that the other Joshes were watching him, like a swarm of starving piranhas watching a goldfish getting fed...

The thing in his hand was so very, very warm.

Joshua #1 tried to discreetly stuff the innocent-looking tube back in the corpse, but his hands were so slippery – he dropped it – why were they so damn slippery?

They were covered in blood. Scarlet blood, warm blood, slippery blood - blood that coated his hands, trickled down his arms in dark, ugly lines. There were black, clotted strings sliding slowly down his arm; gobbets of flesh stuck under his stubby fingernails; that soft, warm, wormlike _thing_ clutched in his trembling palm; and the - and - _and_ -

Joshua #1 lost it.

It was a good thing he hadn't eaten for the past day or so, otherwise the intestines would have come complemented with some very acidic sauce. Dry-heaving is painful as all hell, though, and the Joshes all recoiled in surprise at 1's strange behavior.

"AGH!"

"What do you think you're doing?"

"You didn't even eat it yet! Why are you choking?"

"Hurry up! It's getting cold!"

"GO AHEAD AND EAT IT!"

Joshua #1 could hear the murderous cries surrounding him like a wailing wind. Even though his life depended on this moment, on this action, he simply could not bring himself to offer up so much as a measly lick. Shooting is one thing. Cannibalism is another. He bent over, gagging, eyes watering. Neku...Neku...

WHAT WAS HE _DOING? _

It was NEKU! Not just some cattle – it was NEKU, NEKU SAKURABA,_ THEY'D PLAYED HOPSCOTCH TOGETHER TWO WEEKS AGO- _

"I can't!" 1 choked out, clenching his fists. "I-I won't! _I won't do it!_" The Joshua clone – no, not a clone – buried his face in his bloody hands and started to cry.

The Joshes regarded this dramatic display with faint amusement. Or they would have, if they hadn't been the starving sharks that are activated Joshua units. As it was, they began to growl and jab at the alternate Joshua with their sharp fingernails, trying to get him to get a move on or get eaten.

The jabs were rough and painful, like being stabbed with an exacto-knife over and over again. The alternate Joshua didn't even feel it, so far drowned was he in despair; he curled up into a tight, hysterical ball, sobbing and sobbing and shaking with the force of it. It was amazing – once the floodgates were opened, the tears wouldn't stop coming. "I-I won't do it...I _won't_...I'm so sorry...oh, Neku..._Neku_..."

Joshua #2 snapped his sharp teeth dangerously close to the blubbering Joshua's ear, only to receive a crack on the head from #6. He hissed and scuttled away, like some sort of demonic crab.

"Stop this at once!" #6 barked, leaping off the bed, grabbing the out-of-dimensioner by the back of his shirt and hauling him to his feet. He turned the boy around to face him, dug his nails into the boy's thin, heaving shoulders. It did no good.

"N-Neku...Neku...I'm _sorry_...s-sorry...so (hic) sorry...Neku..._ohhhhh_..."

"You stop! Stop right now!" #6 shook the emotional mess back and forth, to little effect other than a few ululating wails.

"Th-this is...it's...all my (hic)...fault...oh...ohhhh...I wanna go home...I wanna go home...I wanna go _home_...I-I...wanna-"

_SMACK!_

#6 slapped the poor boy across the face, knocking the frightful wails from his lips. The alternate Joshua looked up at him – his face was a wreck, leaking from every available orifice; his eyes glistened and sparkled with tears, his lip trembled – and he whimpered, whimpered.

"_Shut up_," spat Joshua #6. "You're an insolent bitch if you won't eat, and if you can't eat, you're defective. You're keeping us from our dinner by being a spoiled brat. Carry on like this, you stupid, stupid thing, and we will erase you. We will rip you apart. We will lick the steaming fat from your weeping bones. So stop being such a selfish pig and EAT SOMETHING."

"...won't...can't..." The Joshua stared straight ahead, unseeing. A fresh wave of tears spilled over his disgusting eyelids, streaking pink paths though his blood-smeared cheeks. Mucus dribbled out of his nostrils, pooled on his upper lip.

"So we erase you. _Shut up_," Joshua #6 snarled indignantly when, overcome by a sudden surge of grief, the boy grabbed him in a hug and started crying into his shoulder. "Ugh, you filthy, filthy—get off of me, you disgusting—get your horrible eye-juices off of my—_agh!_ Help me!"

The other Joshes were at a loss. But the Neku was unnattended, so they left their leader to struggle with the weeping example of utter despair. Joshuas aren't the most loyal things in the world, you know.

They ripped and tore; blood splattered everywhere; flesh was stripped from bone, and then the bones were cracked open and devoured as well; organs were clawed open and the goo sucked out. The only thing saved from utter destruction happened to be the rent - or rather, the Neku's cheeks, which #5 peeled off and tossed aside with complete disregard for finesse.

6 couldn't bear it. This was _torturous _– he was so hungry... He turned to face the wailing Joshua with fresh loathing. "Release me at once, or I'll rip your arms off!"

"I...I-I...I..."

6 snarled and bit the Joshua on the shoulder. The boy cried out with pain and his vicegrip lessened – so Joshua #6 did the only logical thing and shoved him off. He regained his balance, watching the boy scramble across the floor, a sobbing wreck.

Lip curling in disgust, 6 kicked the heap of despair in the side. The Other Joshua whimpered, tried to hide behind his trembling, bloody hands.

"You're defective. And here I thought you were a spy, a traitor. Ha...! My opinions of you were truly too generous, hm?" Joshua #6 advanced on the cowering #1, sneering. "Defective! You're defective. Ha! We should rip off your skin. We should snap your arms off and shred them into Special Shio Ramen, we should carve out your fat and bake it into cheesecake...just like we did to the last one."

"Don't kill me! D-don't kill me, please...please..." The Other Joshua crawled away, crying like a wounded animal.

From afar there came soft, wet noises, punctuated sharply by the crackling of glass irises, ground to powder between teeth.

"To think," Joshua 6 drawled, inspecting the back of his hand lazily. The light filtering through the curtains snagged on the razor-sharp fingernails, and they glowed a luminous, sickly yellow. "To think I let a defective unit into my pack! Tsk, tsk. We should have ripped you apart when we had the chance."

Josh 6 looked at the quivering creature a moment longer, regarding the horrible abomination with faint amusement._ I'm sorry, Pamela, but our meeting will have to be tomorrow,_ he thought, slightly regretfully.

He sprung.

_Eyes black, talons bared, rows and rows and rows of jagged, blood-encrusted teeth, murderous and lightning fast and so hungry so hungry so hungry -_

The Other Joshua screamed in absolute terror, lashing out blindly with his not-so-nice shoe.

Through some magnificent stroke of luck, the kick connected. Sharp teeth stabbed into beat-up leather, stabbed into his toes with a horrible CRACK – another scream, another horrible harpy-scream -

The sound was too harsh for the Joshua unit's sensitive hearing. 6 flinched away, howling; the Other Joshua wailed and clutched his bloody shoe, a fresh wave of revolting tears oozing out of his eyes.

6 clawed at his ears, hissing and spitting. His activated eyes saw the defective Joshua, emitting those terrifying screams – why? This never happened! Why was it hurting...?

The sight of blood dripping out of the Other Joshua's shoe turned 6's vision red with rage. The scent of it, that metallic, salty scent blooming like an explosion of springs and summers in his flared nostrils, butterflies beating in the cage of his computerized brain. He moaned with want, with hunger, with hatred...

The Other Joshua saw, and tried to crawl away – but 6 was on him in an instant. _"ThIS eNds HErE!"_ shouted 6, digging his nails into the tender shoulder-flesh, the all-consuming hunger rising up in him like a black tidal wave -

"N-no, stop! PLEASE! PLEASE, DON'T KILL ME – if you do, Shibuya – Neku – I-I –" The terrified Joshua wriggled like a wriggling piece of plywood, twisting this way and that, thrashing under the ravenous clones weight. He kicked, he struggled, he bit he scratched he hit and he kicked some more – and he did not surrender, for surrender meant being ripped apart and devoured, never going home again, never never never – never mind the pain! Joshua had to get home, he just had to, for both Neku's sake and his...for the sake of all the Players trapped in a ceaseless Game in his absence, for the sake of his UG...

6's jaws snapped, foaming, frenzied. There was something birdlike about his jerky movements, the way his neck stabbed down and back, trying to grab the Other Joshua in his teeth and rip rip rip him to pieces. The clone didn't even look human anymore – those horrible black eyes, those horrible teeth, snapping and snarling and stabbing.

"DON'T KILL ME! I'll do anything! ANYTHING, _ANYTHING! PLEASE-"_

Suddenly, the attack ceased.

Joshua #6's eyes flickered, constricted. Violet irises bloomed, the shark mouth crinkled back to human width. The nostrils stopped flaring.

"aNytHINg, yOU SaY?" growled the clone, the wet smell of raw flesh faint on his hot breath. Slowly, his voice became less distorted, became more smooth. "...Anything?"

The Other Joshua gulped and nodded weakly.

"Hmm." Joshua #6 appeared to consider this for a moment. "It is by Pamela's will that, as a defective unit, you must be destroyed. But..." The clone smirked evilly. "I suppose you could be some use to me yet. What say you we strike a deal?"

"...O-Okay," the other Josh sniffed, scared out of his mind.

Joshua #6 pushed off of the boy's frail chest and kneeled on the floor, looking downright deplorable. "As you know, the Tithing Ceremony is in two days. A sacrifice to the Great Mother, Pamela, is required."

"...A sacrifice?"

"Yes, very good, dear." The Joshua clone sneered condescendingly. "How about this for a little exchange – if you can bring me two sacrifices by the night of the festival, I will let you go free, no trouble."

The Other Joshua's glistening eyes widened in disbelief. Free...he could escape from this pack, go into hiding, maybe – he could hide in Pork City, living off the vending machines buried in the piles of stuff – lay low for a while, at least until he came up with a new plan for escape..._escape! _Here was a chance to finally escape from this hell once and for all, and all he had to do was bring in two of those robots...

"But, my darling, if you can't manage to do that, well...I'm sorry to say it, but..." Joshua #6's eyes glinted in a way that said he wasn't sorry at all. "I guess we'll have to sacrifice _you_ to our beautiful Mother instead, won't we?"

The Other Joshua wiped his tears away, hauled himself into a sitting position. Every breath was shuddery and weak, but no longer was he the terrified wreck of a few moments prior. Yes...yes, this was what he had been waiting for. A chance – just a chance - to clear his head, to sit down and _think _without the eyes of a thousand clones scouring him hatefully. He took a deep breath, steeled himself, and nodded. "Th-that sounds fair," he said jerkily, his diaphragm still fluttering in the winds of despair.

"I'm glad we agree," said Joshua #6, grinning even more evilly – if that was even possible. "But there is one condition. You see, I don't want you dragging in just any old unit, dear. Do you understand what I'm getting at?"

The Other Joshua had a feeling he knew, but he said nothing.

"That's right. I have two specific units in mind, my dear. But don't worry, it won't be hard to fetch them. In fact, they live two doors down." He caressed the boy's cheek with his sharp talons. "Room 27. It won't be hard at all."

A shiver laced its way up the Other Joshua's spine – a fearful shiver, a shiver of dark premonition. Foresight prickled in his back, saying _no, no, no_.

"So, what do you say?" Glass-violet eyes glinted heartlessly. "Do we have a deal?"

A chance to escape this hell, a chance to go home – this was all he wanted. It was all that mattered. He was sick of this place, he just wanted to go home...

The Other Joshua fixed #6 in his gaze - unflinching, unwavering.

"Of course."

* * *

**A/N:** WHO KNEW THAT YOU CAN MAKE DELICIOUS ROOT BEER OUT OF EXTRACT AND DRY ICE?

BECAUSE_ I SURE DIDN'T!_

Seriously, my science teacher made a whole damn keg of the stuff and propped it up by the sink in the rear of the room. So my friend and I hung out in the back all period, taking shots of root beer and stuff when the teacher wasn't looking. High times, dudes. High times.

Aw, man. That stuff was TASTY. I am totally craving it right now. Also, Joshua would be the best babysitter ever - at least, watching him struggle to tend to the needs of a babyfied Neku, Hanekoma and Sho would be freaking hilarious.

"TEECH ME COMPWEX MAFF! WAAAH! I WANNA WEARN ANDVANCED CALCUWUS!_ I WANNA WEARN ANDVANCED CALCUWUS!" _

"No, no! You have to learn _basic algebra_ first, idiot child-"

Totally writing a oneshot about that. You can't stop me.

SO ANYWAY we finally know what the Joshes are actually doing. (Ha, ha, fak u Ben and your naïvete.) I'm gonna assume you're at least a little surprised, and that the foreshadowing (voreshadowing? _SORRY, SORRY..._) wasn't too obvious. But I warned you at the beginning, didn't I? It's not Josh/Neku at all. The relationship here is more like Morlock/Eloi. The Morlocks make the cute little innocent Eloi feel nice and comfortable, giving them clothes and food and stuff - they wait until they're juuust fat enough, and then they drag them down into the sewer and eat them alive. _How romantic~_

((If anyone's a little confused about how you go about eating robot flesh, well – the clones are like cyborgs, kind of. Like, human bodies grown from a specific DNA code, with special computers inserted where brains should be – and a few enhancements here and there, such as the whole activation thing, and with N99: his bones were strengthened with titanium alloy.))

Well drat I just realized it ends with a two-word phrase just like the last chapter oh my GOD what will people think of my writing ability now fret fret fret

WELL! I expect EVERYBODY to review! EVEN THE PEOPLE WHO AREN'T READING THIS - because reviews make my heart feel super-happy!


	13. In which there is Less Action

_**JOSHUA TRIPS**_

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: IN WHICH NEKU AND JOSHUA SCORE A DATE WITH DESTINY THROUGH EXTENSIVE LYING

**TO COMPENSATE FOR THE EXCESSIVE ACTION AND GRODINESS ABUNDANT IN THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER, HAVE A NICE, LONG, BORING-AS-HELL ONE WITH (a poorly-done parody of) JOSHUA FANSERVICE. :D**

The Story So Far: The true nature of the Joshes is revealed to be far more sinister than that goofy harem crap setup you were fantasizing about. If you swallowed your disgust of yowie and kept reading, you are deserving of an award and are probably at least mildly intrigued. If you DO happen to be fond of Josh/Neku, go eat a daisy.

Suddenly, things aren't looking so hot for our snotty heroes...getting home has become even more important than ever. What happened to the world outside of Shibuya? Who in the world built the Joshes and the Nekus, and for what purpose? What does our Joshua plan to do with all that junk his partner had to go buy? Will Neku figure out the Joshes' true motive before it's too late? And most importantly -_ how in the world are they going to get home?_

Rating: Rated T for Tony Tallarico

OF NOTE IN THIS CHAPTER: Plot happens

Genre: Parody/Adventure

* * *

Enough of that guy; I feel like I've been paying_ waaaay_ too much attention to him and his shenanigans. We now return to Neku.

Just outside of AMX, the poor fellow stood on the curb, surveying the area; he was one of the only Nekus outside of the music store, and because of it he looked rather like a violet weed poking out of a field of fluffheaded dandelions. With the occasional rose-vine thrown in, of course. He had a shockingly crimson Christmas stocking gripped in his hands and looked kind of like a hermit. Or a hobo, but that word kind of lost its meaning after the unholy legion known as the "tweens" got their filthy mitts on it.

As it happens, our Neku had just barely managed to escape the clutches of the AMX employees. Turns out that Team Masa-Enojo-Aki-Ta, having been stuck with each other for ages, was heaping love all over the freshmeat.

"Ha, ha," said Neku humorlessly, badge-covered chest glimmering in the afternoon sunlight. "Seriously, they wouldn't stop giving me these retarded Sushi pins. I HAVE ENOUGH." He took his eyes off the fourth wall and resumed scanning the crowds by AMX.

"Kiryus, Kiryus everywhere, nor any Josh for me," Neku said. "Dammit, where is that guy?" There was no sign of a pickup truck anywhere; no crusty ponytails, no bruised-up faces. Nope, all these Joshes looked as if they'd just swaggered out of a spa – pristine, perfect, plastic. Neku scowled and hoisted his (suspiciously computer-shaped) Christmas stocking over his shoulder. _I could call – crap, I still have his phone, don't I...?_

He angsted like a clinically depressed emu for a nostalgia-heavy minute, and then suddenly remembered – they were supposed to meet up at the motel, right? Maybe Sota dropped him off or something. Neku stuck out his tongue thoughtfully, toying with the mental image of Joshua and Sota in a red pickup truck, blazing a trail of hellfire all through Shibuya. Crazy.

Whatever had happened to that weirdo didn't change the fact that our flame-headed hero had no way to get back to base, other than the conventional method - _walking_, ugh, can you believe...? He sighed and began the long lug back to Dogenzaka.

(I'm sure you'd love to hear all about his very eventful five-minute journey over hill and dale; but it was really boring. You'd only be wasting your time. Not that you aren't already, reading a fanfiction written by a 13-year-old for a Japanese video game; one about angsty anime characters that kill furries with the power of Imagination, no less.

...Let's just skip a few minutes ahead, shall we?)

A few minutes later, Neku found himself dragging an overstuffed Christmas stocking behind him through the front door of the Pig Sigil Motel. One look told him the lobby was in pretty much the same condition as when they'd left it - but Recepshua, on the other hand... He certainly looked much better, sitting pretty in his rolly-chair with feet propped on his desk, a Joshly smirk twisting his lips. He was eating something that looked like a small fried pancake, and from the looks of things he was enjoying himself.

Neku tried to slip by unnoticed, but his ninja skills must have been rusty, because Recepshua caught sight of him straightaway. (The Christmas stocking might have had something to do with it, obnoxiously red as it was.) "Oh! It's you." The Josh clone sniffed delicately and nodded to himself, as if confirming some fact, then got back to his fried stuff. "Where's your special friend?"

"He's not my_ special friend,_" Neku muttered, shuddering at the thought. "So...wait, he's not here?"

Recepshua looked at him forlornly. "Ah, no. I would have remembered seeing that meddling freshie. Not even my _lunch break_ could distract me from that neanderthal's pitiful excuse for a presence. He's so annoying." He huffed noisily and took a big, loud, crunchy bite of his small pancake, which seemed to set his mind at ease. "Mmmm, I'm in paradise...hee, hee..."

Neku couldn't resist. "What are you eating, anyway?" He leaned a little closer, curious. It didn't look much like a pancake at all...more like some kind of fried meat patty? It smelled kinda tasty, like a...a pork chop, or something.

The Josh clone laughed maliciously, sneering at him with sharp eyes and sharp teeth. Neku flinched away. "Never you mind, sweetie. Go on upstairs and _relax_."

Neku flinched at being called "sweetie," scowled, and proceeded to drag his computer-shaped Christmas stocking up the stairs. It was slow going, but he wound his way up both flights and staggered down the hall to room 27. _Sweetie!_ Humph! He wasn't sweet! His mom hadn't dubbed him "Pain-in-the-Neku" for nothing! Why, he kicked puppies, he spat on babies, he took candy from children and dropped it in the sand, he vandalized public places and pasted "Slay the Whales" stickers on the family van!

...Well, okay, maybe not. But he hadn't written a thank-you card in his life, he didn't send postcards, and he had zero tolerance for stuffed animals or Get-Well balloons! Maybe he was nice deep down in his heart, but that didn't mean he had to be a sappy Scout about it. Neku twisted his bangs, annoyed, and kicked the door open.

His gut gave a funny lurch – the door was unlocked! _Suppose the Joshes were _– but, fortunately for him, his momentary fears were unnecessary. The room was empty.

_Holy crap, Neku. Welcome to the Arctic, _Neku thought as he hauled his stocking inside, greeted by a blast of frigid air-conditioning._ Good grief. I really wish I had some fat cells right now...brr._

He chunked his stocking in the corner, scanning the room. An eyebrow was raised._ He's really not back yet, is he...huh. What's he doing? _Neku recalled the way Joshua's face lit up like Christmas the instant he'd laid eyes on Sota's truck. Never before had Neku seen Joshua "light up." In fact, up until this point he hadn't thought it possible._ No way...is he _still_ screwing around with that pickup truck? _Neku shook his head. _What a weirdo._

Anyway. Neku made sure to lock the door, in case that brigade of terror and their succubine confections should come flouncing into the neighborhood – his partner had the key, after all. Neku turned away from the door, stretched, and all of a sudden – BAM! Like a one-two punch to the teeth, he suddenly became acutely aware of how soul-crushingly exhausted he was. The clock read 3:27 PM, but all Neku saw was the word "naptime" in dull red LED.

He yawned, jaw cracking. "Aaawng...hnnn...if you insist, Clocky..." The gangly teenager tottered off towards the bed with a sort of drowsy super-determination. He only paused for a moment, in which he undid the fastens on his boots and kicked them into a corner. That accomplished, he collapsed on the covers and closed his eyes. Neku was an accomplished napper (it's how the Japanese lose weight – sleeping instead of eating) he was out like a light in no time.

* * *

But what do you know – he was shaken rudely awake not more than five minutes later. "Neku! Neku!"

At the sight of that particular face leering over him, Neku freaked out a little. "Nngh! _Joshes_-"

"No, no! It's me!" The owner of the scratchy voice dug his nails into Neku's arm, like he was really pissed or something.

"Sorry. Josh_ua_." Neku rubbed his eyes and sat up with a groan, and then blinked stupidly – he hadn't really taken a good look at Joshua for about an hour, and so the sight of him was slightly jarring.

Joshua's normally fluffy hair was stringy, the color of a filthy mop, and it stuck to his scalp; the bruises looked angrier than ever, especially with those startlingly clean bandages pasted on top. All of his person seemed thoroughly exhausted, and to top it all off he was enveloped in a crunchy outer layer of snotlike crust, with a little sprinkling of dirt and engine grease for flavor. To say he had a haggard look about him would be an understatement. The Proxy narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "You look...sticky."

Joshua scowled. "I'm flattered, really." He gingerly tucked a strand of hair behind his ear – but from the grimace on his face alone, you would've thought the guy had just plunged his hand into a bucket full of dead banana slugs or something. There was a rustling sound like a plastic bag being dropped, and suddenly he was delicately touching his horrible, stringy mess of hair with both hands. "Well, anyway. Get your bony bum off the bed, Nek-nek. I require your assistance."

"Oh, whatever it is, go do it yourself." Neku fell back on the bed with a mighty groan. "I'm tireder than a masochistic Sherpa who died of overwork and exhaustion and stuff." He rolled on his side and resumed CATnapping.

"Neku!" Naturally, Joshua disapproved of this action. "Ugh... You're the Proxy, you have to do what I say – and I say you need to set up this computer for me."

"Excuse me, _Mom_, but I don't think the word 'Proxy' is stencilled on my butt, thank you."

"Neku!" Josh cried, stomping his foot. "You...oh, come on!_ Please?_"

"Make me a cheesecake, then we'll talk."

And Joshua threw his head back with all the drama he could muster, and gargled thus:

"How about you GET UP, OR GET SHOT."

Neku nearly teleported out of the bed, then tried to make it look casual. "W-when you put it _that _way..."

"Hm. I thought so." Seeing that he did indeed still have some scrap of authority, Joshua looked _slightly_ more smug, which meant the universe was _slightly_ closer to being back in alignment. "Brr, it's freezing in here...were you messing around with the – no? Okay, yeah, sleeveless shirt, I gotcha. Now, Neku. Did you get the computer like I asked?"

"Uh, yeah. Of course. For Neku Sakuraba, shopping is serious," Neku said, smoothing his sleeveless shirt out all casual-like, and shivering slightly. "A serious hassle."

"...Okay. So where is it?"

Neku jabbed a bony finger at the Christmas stocking. An eyebrow was arched, but no questions were asked; and soon enough the contents of the stocking had been dumped out and arranged on the bed in an orderly fashion. Why on the bed? Well, Joshua and Neku's collective rear end was too tired and sore from slithering around in vegebles and books, wrestling information out of semi-robots, dancing in the rain, scoping out Pork City guts, and fighting avengers of justice to tolerate the sheer crappiness of the filthy carpet. The bed, by comparison, was softer than Rhyme's gooey marshmallow center of a heart. It was obviously the better choice for a tired collective rear end, so there you go.

Joshua booted up the computer. Neku plugged in the charger, so that they would be tripping the power unlimited.

They were a super-team.

"Okay, it looks like a Windows," Joshua remarked unnecessarily, staring at the four-color flag on the sign-in screen.

"Naw, it's clearly a Macbook," Neku grumbled. "All right, what the hell are we doing, anyway?

Joshua shifted around so that his buttocks were more comfortably snuggled into the bed. "Well, to put it simply...we are going to turn to the mighty power of the internets."

Neku blinked. "Internets? THAT'S your plan? You're gonna ask some strangers for help on Omegle? Oh, maybe put a thing on 2chan-"

"SHUT," snapped Joshua, clicking stuff. "You misunderstand. I'm not referring to your..._mortal_ Internet."

Neku blinked. "What other internets is there?"

Joshua gave Neku a withering look. "Why do you think they call them 'the internets?' Because there's more than one, just like there's more than one layer of reality-"

"Blah, blah, blah." The Proxy rolled his eyes all impudently. "Just show me, 'k?"

With a huff, Joshua picked up the USB connector and fumbled around with it until it was a USB connected. He passionately opened up the Internet Connection-inator and clicked on the "Search for Available Connections" button with conviction. Then, he grabbed the quartz crystal keychain and gripped it tight, watching the connecty-arrows of connection spin around and stuff while they connected to an internet connection available for connecting to.

"...What are you doing? Dowsing for internet?"

Joshua knit his eyebrows up and grunted in response, burning with intense concentration. Neku didn't know what to make of that, really.

After like, a second of this idiocy, Joshua started to tremble slightly. His fingers quivered like chihuahuas on ice, but his grip on the crystal remained firm. His face began to contort, making the most funny and un-Joshly of expressions; his lips shivered with the occasional soft "Unh...!" All of a sudden - "_Nnnrf-!_" - the boy went rigid for an instant, then relaxed – and what do you know, the crystal began to glow with a pale blue light.

"What did I just watch?" Neku wondered aloud, bile fascination oozing from his soul-pores.

"Crystal is made of perfectly-ordered patterns of atoms," Joshua muttered, eyes fluttering closed. "Or something. I don't care. But if you have a crystal, it will act as an amplifier to your Soul."

"Where'd you hear that, the nerd convention?" The poor Proxy looked a little distraught. "And, more importantly - _what did I just watch?_"

Joshua opened his eyes all narrow and squinty and angry-looking and stuff. "I ripped a piece of my Soul off and shoved it out into this keychain from under my fingernail, and it hurts like hell, thank you." He took the crystal and touched it to the USB connector with a small _tap_. "So...it's difficult, but I think I can manage to tune this teeny-tiny bit of Soul up to UG levels. And then..."

There followed a brief silence, which was quickly filled with... ("Oh...ooo-_ooh!_ Ah...") …more weird noises and peculiar faces from Joshua. Neku looked away, awkward. _I can't be the only one seeing him getting off, here. I can't. On a piece of _quartz_ – gods, this is insane..._

Joshua let loose a piercing scream-giggle - there was a bright blue-white flash - and suddenly, an internet connection appeared on the screen.

The whole thing was _ridiculous_. Neku had no idea how to react – should he laugh, should he cringe, should he comment, should he shove it to the back of his head and forget about it? Predictably enough, Neku just wound up ignoring it. Or trying to – he kept hearing it in his head, replaying over and over, exactly the way a really inappropriate-yet-riotous joke does when you're at a classy dinner function with your veterinarian girlfriend and her boss is going on about how his dog got cancer, AIDS, and tuberculosis on the same day, and your life depends on whether you can hold back the snickers for five minutes longer.

Poor Joshua's ears had turned bright pink, thanks to said piercing scream-giggle. It was pretty damn embarrassing, I must say. "Ah...um...okay. We have a connection. Excellent."

"...Yeah."

"Okay. I'm clicking on it right now."

"...Yeah."

"Okay."

They got on the internet.

Neku immediately found something other than Joshua's oddly-hilarious orgasmic scream of giggly pain to focus on. Internet Explorer looked different – for one thing, the toolbar was covered in tiny buttons shaped like pins. Neku zeroed in on the one shaped like the Player pin and started poking Joshua in the shoulder like a crazy woodpecker, demanding answers. "What does THAT button do? Eh? Eh?"

"Why, it lets you scan for viruses," Joshua replied, very matter-of-factly.

Despite himself, Neku was kind of impressed by this new breed of internets. Part of him wanted to shove Josh off the bed and hijack the controls, but the more rational part reminded him that Joshua was the Composer and had a memory like an elephant or something. (Actually, Joshua was quite fond of forgetting where he put his car keys – and further, forgetting that he didn't have car keys to lose in the first place. But that's a story for another day.)

Joshua hesitated, and sighed. "All right, all right. I can feel it – you're bombarding me with your intense desire. You're just _burning _to dick around on the internets, am I right?"

Neku nodded sheepishly.

"Well, have at it." Joshua plunked the laptop down on Neku's bony thighs. "You get five minutes of dicking, and then we get to business. Sound fair?"

"Fair enough," was the distracted reply. Neku was already sprinting off in the direction of NicoNico Douga, scanning for viruses and drawing firewalls with his mouse. _I can't wait to piss all over those horrible Josh/Neku fan videos with my newfound psych buttons, ho ho!_

Speaking of which...Joshua hesitated a moment more, jiggling his knee, and then rushed off to attend to his business.

Which you _really don't_ want to hear about.

* * *

That would have been the end of it, if Joshua hadn't happened to glance at the mirror on the way out. That single glimpse had something of a paralyzing effect, freezing Joshua's feet to the floor.

Suffice it to say that Joshua, as a certified member of the Bishounen Brigade, had never seen himself so...so..._filthy_. His eyes widened slightly and his jaw went slack in equal parts awe and skull-shattering horror. His hair, his face, covered in a crust of dried sweat and congealed Pamela juice and powdered with grime... _What fresh new hell is this? _he wondered, gently touching his cheek with his (equally-grubby) hand as if to confirm he wasn't having some sort of horrible drug-induced hallucination, some kind of psychedelic nightmare vision. Because bad things happen when Joshua Trips.

But no, it was real. It was horribly, undeniably _real,_ and Joshua could suddenly feel every square inch of the gunk caked onto his skin begin to constrict, as if he were one of those awful crabs getting cracked in his own shell. Panic brushed at the corners of his consciousness, his heart rate quickened. He had to get this stuff off. NOW.

Joshua was halfway through unbuttoning his shirt (which was stiff and crinkly as canvas, thanks to the snotlike layers of Pamela essence dried upon it) when he remembered the door was wide open, and Neku would probably disapprove of a strip if it involved – wh – what – was that a...candy wrapper stuck to his left pectoral...? Oh, sweet, heavenly Angels...

Joshua gave up on his clothes completely and stumbled into the stall, stunned. Shell-shocked. Stupefied. He ignited the shower with trembling fingers, and let the holy waters purify his soul and wash the uncleanliness away.

Can you smell a SHOWER SCENE? Fan-service ahoy!

Or maybe not, because Joshua was dirtier than a dog, and he felt worse. He could feel the filth staining his very Soul, the general putrescence stinking up his heart. In simplest terms, Joshua was miserable. (It seems silly to you, sure; but if you were a bishie, you'd feel his pain.) The water ran steaming fingers through his hair, carving deep canals in the grime on his face. With a strangled moan, Joshua peeled the rest of his clothes off and just stood there, in the steam and spray, feeling highly sorry for himself.

Since the shower didn't have one of those back-brushers handy, he had to scrape the grime off with his nubby fingernails, scratching and scrabbling all over his face and back and legs and arms and such. Before long, he had recruited the help of a bar of soap, and soon the remaining dirt was being assaulted from every direction at once. Needless to say, Josh was standing inch-deep in dubious-looking beige water before he was through. He plucked his sodden clothes off the floor and held them under the showerhead, hoping to rinse them out a little. That accomplished, he dumped them on the bathroom floor and got back to spraying himself with purifying holy water and stuff. All that was left was to wash his hair.

But to Joshua's unending angst, the novelty shampoos were on the sink.

Joshua muttered a few words that aren't even included in the mortal lexicon and decided it would be best if he could call in a favor.

"Neku? Hey, uh, Neku, dear..."

There was no answer, simply because Neku had plugged his mp3 player into the computer to charge, and subsequently rediscovered his love for opera music.

"Neku! NEKU!" Joshua slumped back against the wall and growled. What was the use of a Proxy if he wouldn't do things in your place?

Joshua considered his options. He could yell some more, but what purpose would it serve? He had to keep his eyes on the goal – the shampoos. After much deliberating back and forth, Joshua decided he could nip out of the nice, warm shower, grab a few soaps from the sink, and be back in before the gooseflesh decided to consume his bones. It sounded like a reasonable-enough plan.

So, Joshua coiled his muscles like a jaguar and sprang for the sink. Unfortunately, he slipped and came crashing down on the icy floor with a hideous racket.

_That_ got Neku's attention. I'm sure if you ever see a naked Joshua jump out of your shower with RAEP written all over his face, you'd be a little more attentive, too. After a second of fearful attentiveness, the Proxy came to the realization that Joshua's face was not one of RAEPful intentions, but more of a 'severe concentration' thing. And presently, it had shifted to more of an 'intense pain.' Neku ripped the 'phones off his head and came running up to Joshua's side, all scared-looking.

"WHOA, dude! Are you okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine, I just slipped," Joshua said, through a mouthful of tile.

"That was NASTY. NASTY. NASTY. _Jumping out of the shower? _What were you thinking?"

"Stupid thoughts," Joshua grumbled, spitting out a chunk of mortar and rolling himself on his back.

There was a brief pause.

"...Joshua."

"Yes, Neku?"

"It's not cool to take showers in your skivvies, Joshua." Neku pointed an accusing finger at Joshua's soapy briefs. "Jeez, didn't you ever get bullied in the locker room?"

"I don't take showers at school," Joshua sniffed. "Er, didn't."

"Not even one?"

"...There never was a need, because I forged sick notes."

"And they didn't push you around a little for being such a weasel?"

Joshua shifted uncomfortably. "What do you think?"

"I think you're ridiculous. Joshua, you just took a shower in your shoes."

The Composer of Shibuya stared at his shoe-clad feet blankly. "...So I did."

"And this doesn't bother you?" Neku arched an eyebrow and spoke with a hint of concern. "Dude, are you...okay? Because, like, I always knew you were weird, but this is bordering on strange."

"I'm fine."

"Are you sure this place isn't...bothering you?" Neku asked, suddenly. "Because I know for a fact that you're not an impervious bastion of coldhearted apathy, despite what you'd have me believe."

Joshua yawned in reply. It was a very nice yawn, by the way.

"...Oh. I guess you're tired too, huh?"

"Don't talk to me like I'm your baby brother, Nicky-boy. It's just the head cold. I'm fine," Joshua insisted, struggling to sit up and failing with a miserable _oof!_

Neku squinted thoughtfully, and murmured, "No, you're not."

"What are you talking about _now_, my dear little Proxy dearest?"

His dear little Proxy dearest shrugged, and Joshua got the strangest sense that his partner was trying to tell him something without words. "I dunno...but lying isn't right. I'm not sure who you're lying to, and I'm not sure why, but... You can't have a relationship built on lies. Not even with yourself."

Joshua blinked. "Ah, bad poetry-"

"All right, I'm done leering at your horrible, putrid nudity. Can we finish up with this glorious plan of yours? Personally, I'd rather like to be back in my _own_ bed tomorrow night. I hate thinking what goes down in these motel rooms..."

"I'm not putrid! And, yes, of course – as soon as I attend to my hair."

* * *

Neku could understand the importance of hair, because he was openly metro about his own glorious corona of feathery man-locks – he wasn't shy about spending hours at the salon, getting the bleach done (and then a coating of orange dye for extra-bold color); he didn't mind buying and using fancy, vitamin-enriched conditioners for damaged, overprocessed hair; and everybody knew how he felt about taking forever to get ready in the morning as he moussed and gelled and sprayed each spike into peak condition. He was very close with his barber, and his mom had taken to calling him a "Hairspray Queen" - partly because he was always singing _Twister_ around the house, and partly because...of his gravity-defying hairdo, which looked like a crown. ...Geddit?

But I mean, you could see that from a mile away. There was no use trying to hide it, even though some people (Beat) might raise eyebrows at his spa-frequenting habits. Neku didn't care. He was comfortable in his masculinity, unlike some people. (Beat)

Anyway.

Joshua finished up with his hair, grabbed a towel, and came limping back out to the bed, where Neku was waiting. He was halfway aboard the mattress before his face made contact with a foot.

"What do you think you're doing, Josh?" Neku growled, since Joshua was still dripping wet and wearing practically nothing. Now, for those of you who think that Neku was crazy for not wanting a glistening, nearly-naked Joshua climbing into bed with him, consider this: even though the idea of a glistening, nearly-naked Joshua climbing into bed with you _may _sound highly attractive (or horrifying beyond measure, depending) to you, I think we all can agree that sleeping on wet spots really, really sucks. Neku wasn't all that invested in Joshua's pajamas or lack thereof, but he _did_ give a few shits if his bed was gonna be all cold and wet.

"Oh, grow up." With an annoyed huff, Josh wrapped himself up in his towel and wriggled over to Neku like an enormous caterpillar. His teeth promptly began to chatter, for the a/c had been clocked down to "sheer cold" for some unfathomable reason. Neku's sleeveless shirt was keenly aware of this fact, so after some minor adjustments they were sitting side-by-side, under the covers, with the warm base of the computer spread over their collective knees – Joshua wrapped in his towel and Neku with his filthy shirt folded neatly on the side table. Everything seemed in order, so Joshua declared it was time to begin the business of the evening.

"All that gallivanting around town was in preparation for this moment," Joshua supplied cheerily, nagging premonitions shoved to the back of his mind for the moment.

"Really, now?" Neku handed the computer over to his partner, who seemed to actually know what they were doing for once. This was a bit of a transition from the slightly flustered boy of fifteen minutes ago.

"Of course." Joshua smirked, proving he truly was feeling better. "Now, before we actually begin, first you have to understand - Mr. H has no partner."

"And I have three, because I'm awesome."

"_No_, because you're the black page in our little Underground fax war." Joshua tossed his hair and started muttering as he coasted down the Information Super Highway. "U...G...harm...okay...here...c'mon, Interground, work with me...no, I do not want to buy your Brain Bleach; honestly TropeCo, you and your filthy pothole advertisements...once you click on one, you can_ never _escape, same thing with their stores in Mallvana - one minute you're just trying to pick up a can of high-octane nightmare fuel for lunch and the next thing you know it's three in the morning and you're trying to smuggle rose-colored glasses out under your coat while you obfuscate stupidity. No, NO I do NOT want to Adopt the Dog...sheesh. I _want _to go to Googleplex..._where_ is my Googleplex...ah! Damn you, internets...wait, oh, how _silly_ of me, THAT'S the search bar...oho-! Hello, Googleplex...hm. That's an interesting doodle you have here, today...roses...hm-mm, how appropriate. Or rather, not so. Hee-hee. All right, type it in...now, searching..._click!_ ...Huh? WHAAT? What is this - a website review by the Notsomortal Critic? HMM, HOW FASCINATING—no, no, Joshy, now is not the time... WILL come back to that later... Okay, moving mouse...clicking... Okay... Okay..._gotcha_."

An oddly familiar-looking webpage loaded – it had a crisp, calming color scheme of blue and white, like a Reaper wall, with clean, understated text. Neku's brow furrowed, reading the screen.

"'UGharmony – find your perfect partner today!'" He glanced at Joshua, whose credibility had just been pissed away in a golden arc. "...Seriously?"

There was no immediate response, but Joshua's self-satisfied smirk faltered slightly.

"_This is your glorious plan?_" Neku felt slightly alarmed.

"It's a partner-pacting service," Josh muttered, almost sounding defensive. "Mr. H is addicted."

"...I don't believe this."

"It's legitimate, it's legitimate, I swear!" Joshua began to turn a charming shade of pink, starting with his ears.

Neku rolled his eyes and poked the screen. "Okay, okay, sheesh. So...what exactly are you planning to do with this...partner-finding service, again?"

"Well," Joshua drawled, hauling himself back on the ball. "In a nutshell, we are going to ask Mr. H on a date."

"Hold on, _we?_ This is your plan, and-"

"-and since you're the Casanova of this video game, I need your help to put up a convincing act." Josh tossed his still-damp hair a little. "Mr. H can jump dimensions freely, so we'll simply state where we are and he'll come get us, thinking we're an attractive young woman. Hee, hee, won't he be surprised. I'll probably be smacked around for this trickery, but the important thing is getting us home in one piece."

"That's...actually, that's not a bad idea." Neku contemplated this for a moment. "But...won't we just be seducing the Mr. H from this world?"

"The IG is supposed to transcend dimensions. But anyway, it doesn't really matter which Mr. H we seduce - Mr. H is a plane-jumper in every instance, because of his job as guardian of the Game." The last bit wasn't exactly true, but if Joshua revealed the whole extra-dimensional Angel thing, he'd be fired like a cannon shot. He added a condescending "Don't tell me you forgot already," so that he didn't seem too honest.

It seemed a passable explanation to Neku, in any event. "Well, I guess it's worth a try. How do we do this?"

"Well...first, we have to sign up."

* * *

Of course, UGharmony wanted to siphon their personal information out of their noses before they could get an account. This was not your everyday partner-pairing internet service, though, so Neku needed a little help filling out the criteria. "Rank – Composer, Reaper, or XXX. Which one do I put?"

"Put, um...Composer. No! Put the unknown one."

"Right-o. Designated city?"

"Shibuya, of course. NO, go back go back go back – you have to change it to Composer!"

"Uh, make up your mind," Neku grumbled, but did it anyway. "So, are we a dude or a lady?"

"Let's put lady for now," Joshua said, thoughtfully. "I think we can change it later if it's not working for us."

"What's our name gonna be, then?"

"...Joshneku? ...-ette?"

"Screw that, we're gonna be Jessica." Neku's fingers flew effortlessly over the keys – _tap-tap-tap..._ "What do I put for...'UGmail address?'"

"Bother," Joshua grumbled, shivering in his towel-toga._ I don't want to give them MY UGmail address, _he thought. _...That would look very, very weird on my resume._ "Uh, open up a new tab, I'll just make a new one."

He certainly did, and I'd tell you what it was, but your puny mortal internet could never handle the bandwidth. It happened to include a staggering amount of numbers and letters, a sequence seemingly decided only by Joshua mashing his fist on the keyboard. It was actually the Soul Code of a man named Bob Evans, Composer of some backwater town in Oklahoma, but that was probably just coincidental. Our heroes wound up copy-and-pasting the address into the form, since it was impossible to retype.

With that, the form was pretty much filled out, and they were good to go. Joshua shot him a glance, and Neku nodded; with that note of approval, Josh clicked the button and the form was sent. _Signing up, signing up...I can't believe this..._ Neku found himself feeling strangely calm about the whole situation; but then again, he was quite cool-headed. His bangs were getting a good twisting, though.

_Welcome to UGharmony, Jessica! We would like to thank you for signing up with us!_ read the screen. Neku and Joshua both had the same thought – "Gee, that seems a little forced." _Begin your search for your perfect partner NOW – click the following link!_

"Sure, okay," said Joshua, and clicked on it.

The next page was another form – a freaking LONG one, too. Seriously, it would have made Longcat weep bitter tears of shame. Neku's mouth dropped open. "...Seriously? Joshua Kiryu, what the fff is this shhh?"

"It's just as long as the eHarmony one, only it has some extra UG-specific bits," Joshua said soothingly, trying to disguise his own anxiety. It was like looking at a final exam with Graham's number of questions – it made you want to crap your pants, crawl under the bed, and rock back and forth, crying softly.

"I'm tired already," Neku groaned, watching Joshua scroll through the pages and pages of questions with an increasing sense of impending doom. "This will take all night, Joshua-"

"Doesn't matter," Joshua said sharply. "Right now, the time is four-thirty. In four and a half hours, the Joshes will all fall asleep. We have from now until seven in the morning to fill out this form, customize our profile to look authentic, contact Mr. H, request a date, and decide on a meeting place. We will begin now, and with luck we will finish at around midnight." His violet irises slid into the corner of his eyes and locked on Neku's big blue ones. "And you will help me. We will work all night if we have to, because we are PARTNERS, godammit, and we ARE going home tomorrow. Do I make myself clear?"

"Crystal," said Neku, and then snickered very inappropriately.

Joshua turned pink again and whacked him on the back of the head. "I would appreciate it if you'd at least _pretend_ to pay me a little respect once in a while, Neku Sakuraba."

"Oh, I'm trying," Neku chuckled, trying desperately to stop thinking about that ridiculous giggle-scream.

Joshua sighed, feeling slightly hurt. Maybe it was the fact that he was ninety-per cent naked, shivering, with bandages and bruises on his cheeks, all wrapped in a fluffy pink towel. Maybe it was his effeminate babyface and drowsy-looking eyes. Maybe Neku just didn't like him. But whatever the case, he just couldn't push Neku around today. On top of that, it felt like his partner was laughing at him behind his back. The chunk of Neku's soul that was wedged in his cold, black heart trilled uncomfortably at the prospect.

"Whatever. Let's just get this show on the road, okay?"

"Sure." Neku propped a few pillows behind his achy back, grumbling.

First, of course, they tried to look Mr. H up without going the whole quiz-matches route. But UGharmony didn't have a search function – understandable since it was a partner-matching service, not a social networking site. If you already had a partner in mind, there was no point in using UGharmony, was there?

The personality quiz was, thankfully, all selection-based – but still, they had to put some thought into it.

"So, Neku. What does Mr. H find attractive in a woman?"

"Why are you asking _me?_" Neku sputtered. "I barely know him!"

Joshua shrugged. "Well, you're the rabid CAT fanboy, aren't you? It seems like you'd be more likely to know his weird little details."

"I didn't even know who he WAS until you told me! I don't keep tabs on his love life!"

"Neither do I; and so, it seems we have arrived at a most unfortunate impasse." Joshua tapped his finger on the keyboard, a most thoughtful expression on his face. "Isn't CAT's slogan 'Enjoy Everything?'"

"'Enjoy the Moment,' nooblet." Neku considered this for a moment. "'Enjoy Every Moment with All You've Got.' (My mantra, tee hee~.) So...I guess he likes...life?"

"Well, most people don't particularly look forward to death, unless they're retarded emo kids."

Neku glared at his partner, more than a little indignant. "I mean like, living life to the fullest? Maybe...maybe he like, does extreme sports on the weekends?"

Joshua snorted.

"It was just a suggestion," Neku grumbled, retreating to his bang-tugging.

Josh shrugged lightly. "I just can't visualize Mr. H doing dirt-bike tricks in the X-games, that's all." A pause. "...Speaking of extreme sports...I went skydiving once, you know."

"You're lying. Now, if he's all about the enjoying life, he wouldn't like one of those, say, _retarded emo kids_, now would he?"

"That makes sense," Joshua said, fingering his chin. "But you have to take into account that he might have a fetish or something."

"Good gods, I hope not," Neku said, looking a little horrified at the prospect.

Joshua shrugged, thinking of his private thing for rainbows. "People have...strange tastes, sometimes. You have to be considerate."

After a moment more of this business, this fruitless banter back-and-forth, Neku sighed. "Look, Joshua. This isn't working. Let's face it: we don't know a thing about Mr. Hanekoma's personal life – which is really, really weird, because aren't you like, his son or something? No? Hasn't he been saving your sorry behind for a while now? Well, if you've known him so long, how come you don't know a thing about him? ...Anyway, so we don't know anything about the guy. The next best step would be to just...put qualities we like or something and see if it works."

"But I don't like anybody," Joshua said.

"Well," said Neku, the pimp. "I've kissed plenty of girls, so-"

"You mean you played the Pocky game at parties." Joshua shook his head. "Have you ever had a serious girlfriend?"

"...Well, okay, no. But they've _tried_," Neku insisted.

"So we can't do that. What's our next option?"

"I guess we could try...filling it out honestly?" Neku suggested, cautiously. "We fill it out like we were actually _trying_ to get a partner, I mean."

"Hm." Joshua considered this. "Well, okay. But if we fill it out together, it'll end up riddled with contradictions, so therefore we should each have a chance to fill it out by ourselves."

Neku yawned and leaned back on his pillow, getting all settled in and stuff. "Shure. You first."

And so, Joshua filled out the form with all his might. He answered the questions as honestly as he could, just like the directions said to. Somehow, "Jessica's" personality wound up startlingly abrasive – she did not enjoy talking for long hours during the night, she did not care for physical contact, she was not the type to get attached to someone quickly (It took about a week of constant exposure to something for him to become attached, actually. This explains why tossing other people's crap out the window was never a big problem for him.) and she hated animals.

_She doesn't sound very compassionate, loving, or loyal,_ Joshua mused, running over his selections with a faintly disdainful air. _In fact, she sounds downright annoying. I'm glad I don't have to put up with her._

_Ah, well. It's worth a shot, anyway._ With a shrug, he pressed the button, submitting the form.

This is the most boring chapter yet. Good God.

Joshua glanced to the side and saw, judging by the obnoxious snoring and the drool everywhere, Neku had fallen asleep. According to the clock, filling out that stupid form had taken longer than expected – it was now six-thirty. Joshua yawned, his strength and will to remain conscious drained away by the sight of his sleeping partner. Well, a little nap right now didn't sound like a bad idea at all to Joshua, so he closed up the computer and carefully tucked it under the bed, away from the prying eyes of his clones. Then he laid down next to Neku, got all snuggled up in his towel - and he was out in seconds, snoring like a buzzsaw.

* * *

Neku dreamed of pin drops.

He was running through a grassy meadow littered with pretty roses and dead spiders and crap like that. A rainbow spanned the golden sky, which Neku knew was constructed from the oozy carcasses of a thousand ramen noodles. Overhead, there was a giant bee flying around, puking up a fountain of 10,000 yen pins, with Joshua as the rider - and Neku was running behind him, arms outstretched, catching the deluge of pricey honey-colored badges with a goofy look on his face.

BLING!

BLING!

"Neku! Neku! Get me down!" shouted Joshua at a pitch bordering on Bieberesque. He sounded absolutely terrified. "_Please...! Oh_, dear..."

Neku was laughing, spinning around with his arms to the golden-glass sky, grinning like an idiot. "No way! If I go up there, he'll die, you wuss!"

Joshua wrapped his thin arms around the bee's fuzzy neck, looking distraught. "B-but_ I hate bees! _He might sting me with his back stinger – sometimes they do that, you know."

"So? Just, uh, Composer him." Neku turned around, whistling, his ears deaf to Joshua's pleading cries. He resumed catching dem pins.

BLING!

BLING!

BLING...

BLING...

Neku's eyes snapped open abruptly.

"...Nyargh! What a terrible dream...seriously, that dream was so gay, it should have a feather boa on its car." He rubbed his eyes, hauling himself rather stiffly into a sitting position. Clocky told him he'd been out for at least two hours, give or take. A fair enough nap, Neku decided, even if it had only felt like five minutes. Then, because he was still too tired to bother with internal monologue: "Hey, I wonder if Joshua finished up with UGharmony yet..."

He looked to his right and there was his partner, all wrapped up in his towel and fast asleep – hogging the pillow, too, quite predictably. "Yikes! Now _there's _something you don't need to wake up to," Neku muttered, cross at the proximity and very, very glad he'd woken up facing the other direction.

The Composer certainly didn't look all that tough when he was sleeping, not that he ever did when he was awake. Joshua's lips were twisted in a slightly confused-looking pout, eyebrows held at such an angle that communicated great displeasure with his current dream. His hair was just starting to dry, and so the shorter bits on top of his amateurish haircut were stirring in the air-conditioned blasts of frigid floor wind. It didn't look like he was breathing much - but then again, he _was_ dead.

"Huh," Neku thought aloud. "He looks kinda...pissy."

Indeed he did.

"I wonder what _I_ look like when I'm asleep," Neku pondered, seeing as how he couldn't describe his personal sleeping beauty. "I guess I'll have to videotape myself sleeping one of these nights and see if I'm not just the cutest thing ever."

Suddenly, his attention drifted away from these inanities and focused on the annoying sound that had woken him up. It came from under the bed, from the computer, and Neku almost fell out of his warm spot trying to pick it up – heaven forbid. As it happened, his thigh brushed the cold part of the sheets and he freaked out a little. Quite understandable, considering he was the only source of body heat in a bed with a corpse and an a/c on overdrive.

Shivering like a plucked goose, Neku propped the computer on his knees and opened the...lid, I guess – that _is_ what you'd call it, right? Well, he opened it up, and shook some sense into the hibernating machine by scribbling all over the mousepad with his finger. All the while, the computer kept on making that horribly annoying noise –_ Bling, bling, bling..._

He clicked some stuff and wound up on the UGharmony window. "Oh, okay. The bling means they've found me a match, I guess. ...Well, they found _Joshua_ a match. All righty - Jessica, how're you going over with the public...? Let's see, now..."

Click, click, click.

The results caused him to erupt into a bout of riotous laughter. So riotous, in fact, that Joshua ripped himself free of his terrible dream about torpedo dolphins attacking his space kayak just to see what spectacular example of comedic genius he was missing out on. The torpedolphins objected to this and staged a rebellion, trying to drag the Composer back down into the depths of unconsciousness where they could torment him. Josh fought bitterly.

"J-Joshua! Are you awake?" Neku snickered. "Are you coherent?"

Joshua fumbled around groggily for a moment until his floundering hand connected with Neku's atrocious shirt, which was folded innocently on the bedside table. Joshua picked up the rancid piece of clothing and buried his face in it, taking a lungful of the, shall we say..."spicy" aroma.

"Gya-HURK—y-yes, I'm awake." He stared at Neku for a moment, vaguely wondering why he was even there – and then he remembered, and threw the sad excuse for a shirt on the ground with great prejudice.

"Hey, man. I love that thing," Neku griped. "So, guess what?" He bit back a malicious giggle. "You've got dates, Joshua. DATES."

"Oh, really?" The waif looked delighted, albeit drowsy. Then again, he always looked drowsy. "Who loves me?"

"See for yourself!" Neku spun the computer around with a grand gesture.

In case you were wondering, Joshua's only match was Lady GaGa. And, like, six Sho Minamimotos, one of which wore all-white and claimed to be an English major.

"Ffffffff-" Joshua made some rather reprehensible noises. "There must be a mistake...!"

"Nope, this is the honest truth. Only weirdos want to put up with you, dude."

Joshua looked like he'd been stabbed in the face and subsequently crapped on by his own gerbil.

It was such a heartbreaking face, even if it reverted back to the default smirk in seconds. So heartbroken and lonely-looking that it managed to give Neku's heartstrings a healthy tug before it vanished. "Oh, don't look so sad. It probably has more to do with the fact that...uh...hey! We didn't put up a profile picture!" Neku threw his head back and groaned, all angsty-like. "...As I was saying, the fact that we're FREAKING SPACE CADETS."

"Hm," Joshua huffed, messing with his hair a little frantically. "I suppose I could snap a picture with my phone."

"Yeah. Problem. We don't look like girls."

"That sounds like wishful thinking to me," Joshua said, with mixed feelings of smug bitterness.

"Well, anyone who knows us will see the picture and go, 'Hey! That's Joshua!' or whatever. Everyone knows you kinda look like a chick. But me?" Neku shook his head and sighed ruefully. "I'm a foxy god of masculinity. It's almost unfortunate, really."

At this mildly amusing remark, a smile tugged at the corner of Joshua's face muscles; fortunately, it was seized by security and thrown in the dungeons before anyone took notice. "Actually, with your hair down..."

"Huh? Are you trying to say something, here?" Neku glowered.

There was much bickering.

In the end, Joshua managed to coerce Neku into wrapping himself in the fluffy towel and posing for an aerial shot. The intention was to create a feeling of 'redhead tsundere in bathrobe just stepping out of shower,' a feeling that relied heavily on the presumption that viewers of the photo would mistake the line between Neku's pectorals for cleavage. Neku was totally pissed, but he went along with it; after all, he had a spa appointment in three days and had to get his hair bleached by next week. He didn't have the time to sit around and bitch about how emasculating these pictures were.

"This isn't good," Joshua muttered as they surveyed the results of the shoot. "You_ still _look like a man. It's gotta be the scowl."

"Every damn photo is blurry! L-look, that's just a picture of my ear! Joshua, do you know how to handle that thing?" Neku poked the phone, irritated.

"Well, excuse me, but you're wearing my towel and it's only subzero in here," Joshua growled. His teeth were clattering together, such was the intensity of his shivering. Unsurprisingly, he felt an impromptu wrestling match coming on...

But before that train of thought could even get out of the station, Neku had a brainwave. "Hey! What if – what if we wrote 'HELP' in big red letters on our faces and took a picture of both of us?" His eyes sparkled with inspiration. "Y-yeah! We could change our name to 'STUCK IN ALTERNATE DIMENSION' and write out our story on the profile-"

"Your ideas suck," said Joshua, the insufferable snot, because he hated being wrong.

Neku blinked. "Really? You don't think it will work?"

"...A-Absolutely not!" Joshua exclaimed, feeling a trill of power course through his veins. "You know how many people try tricks like that on Gracebook? On MyPlanes? No, we have to try and slip past his defenses somehow. Fly under the radar."

"_Gaydar_, you mean," Neku grumbled. "All right, I guess you know best. You're his little bitch, anyway."

At this last comment, something most peculiar happened.

Neku was tired. Joshua was tired. You have to understand this. They had just run around Shibuya all day, and thanks to their various misadventures they were achy, stiff, and sore all over. Not the greatest conditions for mental breakthroughs in science, if you know what I mean.

Neku probably wasn't thinking when he said that; he probably just got his sarcastic internal commentary confused with his more-or-less "polite" public speech. It happened all the time when he got tired. Neku didn't mean anything by it - he just enjoyed bitching at people and generally being rude, from the safety of his head. Well, Joshua wasn't thinking, either, and so he didn't take this into account. No, he broke his flippant nature for once and took it seriously.

Dead seriously.

"Neku, dear," said Joshua quietly. "When you say things like that, it makes me angry."

"Huh."

"_Very, very angry._"

Neku felt chills, and quickly tossed a glance at his partner to assess _exactly_ how much angry they were dealing with, here. Joshua was staring at him, with his creepy purple eyes – just kind of sitting there, searing holes into his Soul. His hands were trembling, but otherwise he was very, very still.

It felt like the calm before the apocalypse. Neku wasn't sure what to do, other than maybe smash through the window and take a quick suicide over a long, drawn-out torture sequence.

All of a sudden, there was a flash, a spark – a blue snap of light, glinting off of Neku's hand like a fragment of ice. Without further warning, Neku's index knuckle was on fire.

This surprised everyone.

The flame was small and pale blue, and kind of cold. All the same, Neku was screaming like crazy and flailing his hand around. "ARGH! ARRRGH!" Joshua, meanwhile, was putting up a grand effort to dodge the flailing limbs while holding onto his intense pissiness. You couldn't do both at the same time, though, and so Joshua wound up freaking out. Like Neku. Like a _brother_.

The flame vanished without a trace after like, fifteen seconds, but Neku would be examining his hand for radiation poisoning for hours afterward. "Wh-what the hell was that?" Neku demanded. "A lukewarm fire...?"

"A...watered-down version of my Super Jesus Beam, I think," Joshua said, sounding a little surprised himself. He tried to plumb the depths of his emotions and make himself angry again, but all he felt was fatigue and a general apathy.

Neku tipped his head like dopey old N99. "What's that? Super cheeses beam?"

"...Er, sorry. My big laser attack."

"Oh. That. But I thought you had lost your powers!" Neku complained, his tone demanding immediate explanations – not that you could blame him, he was still quite shaken up from the experience. Also, if Joshua still had his powers – WHY the hell were they still in this dimension?

"I didn't lose them, darling, they're just repressed," Joshua growled, spitting out the word darling as if it was a placeholder for something much nastier.

Neku had the sudden revelation that all those "darlings" and "dears" were actually "dumbasses" and "idiots" dressed up in fancy three-piece suits with monocles and top hats. He felt very stupid for not realizing this earlier.

Joshua flicked his hair around, plowing ahead with his grinding speech. As usual. "If this had been our Shibuya, you would be quite effectively disarmed."

Neku shuddered a little, contemplating this concept. If he got hit by a full-strength Composer laser, would his arms vaporize? Or would they just explode, sending bone fragments into everybody's eyes?

"But this is quite interesting. I didn't realize that I could still do that." As for Neku's partner, he was still yammering. The tangent was punctuated here and there by a large yawn or two. "Who knows? Maybe this has some practical uses – we could try welding metal together with my finger-fire, maybe we could build an inter-dimensional catapult and blah blah blah butterscotch blah blah..."

"Dude, dude, stop. Stop talking," Neku interjected. "We can bicker about this in the morning. I don't care if it's only eight at night, I am seriously brain-dead._ Foosh! _The hibernation cycle has activated. See you next spring, Josh."

After announcing his departure with a grim salute, Neku made a big show of collapsing on the pillow and snoring, indicating he was quite asleep.

Now, a gay Joshua would have seized the opportunity and let the tickle torture commence. Our Joshua was not gay, so fortunately we get to miss seeing that disgusting and emasculating spectacle. Our Joshua responsibly muted the computer and stashed it away under the bed. And then, after some shivery thought, he yanked his towel away from Neku, because Joshua's own comfort was like, totally more important.

This was not met with approval, and soon there was a violent kicking match set in motion. It seemed that the horrible, botched kickboxing wouldn't stop for anything, especially since Neku was winning by miles this time around – but then Joshua accidentally sent the covers flying with a poorly-aimed swipe of the leg, and the two boys were landed quite expertly in the clutches of the temperature.

Neku and Joshua erupted in shivery goosebumps simultaneously, teeth chattering like a miniature army of Chatterers.

"Y-you r-r-r-r-really ought-t-t to g-go get that-t-t," Joshua chattered.

"Th-th-that was a f-foolish move, worthy of th-th-the most f-foolishly f-foolish fooly cooly f-f-fools! YOU get it, f-foolish fool!" Neku whipped back, a regular Sakuraba con Karma seeking revenge.

And you know what they say – revenge is a dish best served cold. ...GEDDIT?

"The c-c-c-Composer dict-t-tates that the pruh-pruh-Proxy shall k-kindly get off his ass-ss-ss and go p-p-pick up the b-buh-blanket, a three-se-se-second task that will serve as p-p-penance for ins-s-stigating th-the k-kicking in the f-f-first place-"

"Y-y-you tell him h-He can g-go and [DATA EXPUNGED] in His [DATA EXPUNGED] because He has a [DATA EXPUNGED] ball of [DATA EXPUNGED] for a mother!"

"[DATA EXPUNGED]!"

"OKAY, THAT WASN'T EVEN A SCRABBLE WORD!"

Fight fight fight.

Eventually they stopped yelling at each other long enough to take a breath. Sharp air stabbed at their lungs, and they both shivered horribly.

Joshua looked up, slightly humiliated. Neku felt pretty much the same way, but you know, at least he had pants on.

"Truce?"

"Truce."

They shook on it, then scrambled out of bed and got the blanket together. Using masterful skills of cooperation, theymanoeuvred the sheet back onto the bed and snuggled underneath it.

"You know what," Neku remarked, after they had gotten all squished together for body heat – a parasitic symbiosis of sorts, since Joshua was dead and cold and corpsey and sucked the warmth right out of poor Neku's mitochondria. "We should make ourselves a gang-shake. We could use it whenever we go up against obstacles and emerge victorious - like just now, for instance."

"Zzzzz," said Joshua.

"Fine, ignore me." And Neku signed off for the night with the force of a thousand suns.

* * *

Two floors below, the Joshes were getting ready to sleep, too.

Josh #6 was making sure everyone was tucked in properly before the night cycle kicked in. His packmates were each at least semi-full, and they looked quite pleased now that they had deactivated. Each one was smirking contently as they emitted a sugary aroma. You could hardly smell the blood and guts crusted around their lips, what with all that pinkish perfume wafting out of their pores.

"Good night, everyone," Josh #6 sang sweetly. "I'll tell you all about my meeting with Pamela in the morning."

"Good night," sang his packmates in chorus. Twoey, Three-three, Fourly and Fee-five were all curled up together in the middle of the floor like a kindle of kittens. Just as they should be. "Have fun, okay?"

Josh 6 nodded, waved, and left the backroom quietly. As he slipped through the door like a slippery shadow, he felt a strange feeling of suspicion growing in his brain circuitry. Twoey, Three-three, Fourly and Fee-five were all curled up together in the middle of the floor like a kindle of kittens, yes. His eyes narrowed.

Now, where was Josh #1?

The clone entered the lobby, scanning the room for his defective packmate. The cheesy décor was still cheesy, even in the dark of the evening. The plastic plants cast long, sinister shadows over the stained carpet, and you could barely see the bright fragments of Shibuya at night through the cracked and filthy windowpanes. The room was clearly devoid of Joshuas, with the obvious exception of the receptionist.

Recepshua had gotten snuggled up in his roll-y chair and was idling the time away by spinning around, whistling cheerily as he awaited the night cycle. Joshua #6 ignored him and padded over to the stairwell, creeping up the flights of steps until he got to the third floor.

There was Joshua #1, hovering outside the door of Room 27. He clutched 6's knife in his pale hand.

It looked like he'd been standing there a long time. Waiting.

"It's almost shutdown," Joshua #6 declared, leaning against the banister. Josh #1 jolted, threw a nervous glance in his superior's direction. "By the time that unit falls asleep, you'll be knocked out as well. What's more, you'll be vulnerable to any passing Nekus out here in the open."

"I knew that," muttered the Other Joshua, running his thumb over the blade.

"It's okay, I don't want them dead anyway." Joshua #6 waved his hand dismissively. "Pamela deserves more than day-old carrion, don't you think?"

"Of course," was the slightly delayed reply.

Joshua #6 sauntered over to his defective little packmate's side, draping his arm around the other's shoulders. "Well! You still have tomorrow. Come on, I'll take you downstairs and you can fall asleep with the others. How about that?" His eyes were flat and his smile was kind, even as his fingers crept down and gently pried the knife out of the defective unit's fingers. "What say you, partner?"

The Other Joshua didn't look too pleased, but it wasn't like he had any choice. Joshua #6 dug his sharpened fingernails into the boy's shoulder and pretty much dragged him away from the door, with inhuman strength.

Once the Other Joshua had been safely deposited in the backroom with the others (who proceeded to mock him mercilessly), Joshua #6 was free to leave the motel. He flipped the pocketknife open and closed as he stepped outside, borrowing Recepshua's spirited tune and whistling away. According to his internal clock, it was five minutes to shutdown. Phooey, he would have to activate.

Oh, well. He stepped lightly down the evening streets, trying to make good time. The pavement was bright, glowing in golden pools beneath the lights; the smoke-colored sky and the sharp shadows were one, cutting dark edges to the golden street, the golden buildings. The roses swayed in the evening breeze, spilling their gentle, holy aroma everywhere and every place.

Here and there, strewn across the pavement in a lonely-looking heap, you would come across the occasional Joshua unit. Perhaps they had chased a Neku too far, perhaps they had merely run out of fuel. Whatever the case, they were now sprawled on the pavement, comatose. Vulnerable.

They looked vaguely like twitching corpses. Joshua #6 made a big show of flipping his pocketknife open, glancing from side to side.

In the nooks and crannies and shady passages wedged between buildings, you could see things moving around – hunched over, with terrified, terrible eyes. You could hear them scuffling around boxes, you could hear them whispering. You could feel them staring at you from the shadows, wondering how your flesh tasted with soy sauce. Neku packs, crawling around and hopping from rooftop to rooftop, rising from dumpsters and whispering, waiting, watching.

They were watching those twitching corpses, Joshua #6 knew; they were watching and waiting and watching for shutdown, and then they would feast. Quietly, they would come slithering out of the woodwork, and quietly they would hunch over a sleeping Joshua unit. They would peel the skin away with quiet fingers, and they would feast.

But they would not come near an activated Joshua. They were conditioned to be afraid. Terrified, in fact. But if they became_ too_ terrified, for too long...

Joshua #6's silvery hair stirred faintly in the wind, and he kept close to the rose-vines. Pamela's sweet, sacred arms would protect him. He knew.

The clone checked his internal clock, found it to be 8:59. Splendid. He waited until the seconds were upwards of thirty, and then he activated.

Immediately the world became bright, jittery, feverish. Josh #6 grinned his sharklike grin and sprinted forward, passing the overturned statue of Hachiko, dashing past the bus terminal. There were an unusual amount of Joshua units in this area, but their pale forms registered as nothing more than white blurs as he ran by.

He was heading for the Shibuya river.

* * *

**A/N: **My little sister can say "Neku," but she can't say Joshua. She says "Jarfa" instead. To be fair, she says "Neku" more like "Naku," but she's two. You have to allow a margin of error.

Now I don't dream very much at all, but every once in a while, I'll have a really LONG, WEIRD dream. Like last night - I dreamt an alien came down to earth, but it looked like a little baby with big blue eyes. He had a soft voice and he wore a blue baby-suit thing, and said, "I have come to earth to study humanity." And he landed in a playground and a bunch of little kids had to take care of him and hide him from the teachers. It was kind of bizarre, because I think the baby alien brought two of his cohorts with him for some reason. And they were floating around and crawling through the playground tubes and being highly conspicuous in general. It was pretty weird.

My last really weird dream involved Joshua and Neku playing with paper dolls in a miniature replica of a giant castle made of rust. And they were both, like, five, and Neku was a loud, dirt-covered brat and Joshua was kind of quiet and kept fidgeting in his robes as he explained his dolls to Neku, who didn't really get it. And then Uzuki and Kariya (wearing MIB suits) came and shouted, "FOUND YOU" and dragged Neku away, and Joshua got all bitchy and wouldn't let Ms. K give him a bath until they brought Neku up to play with him some more. Except it was way more _cinematic_ than that.

...Yeah. Review please~


	14. In which Gay Times are Had, pt 1

_**JOSHUA TRIPS**_

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: IN WHICH NEKU AND JOSHUA HAVE A GAY OLD TIME, PT. 1

The Story So Far: Nek-Nek and Jish-Josh tried to play hopscotch, but they were subject to the gyp of the century and now they've landed in an alternate dimension full of yaoibots. In a desperate bid to get home, they opened up a UGharmony account with the hopes of seducing Mr. H with their womanly wiles. Even if their womanly wiles don't work, Mr. H will probably recognize them and come get them, anyway. The primary objective here is getting home - or rather, staying in one piece until their ride appears.

Rating: Rated T for it's a TRAP

OF NOTE IN THIS CHAPTER: Neku gets dragged into drag by the drag-onian Dragon of drag. Also Joshua dies.

Genre: Parody/Adventure

* * *

Long after 6 had left, deep into the wee hours of the morning, the Other Joshua had stared at the ceiling, sleepless. All of the other Joshes were curled up around him, comatose, humming faintly and giving off a most pleasant warmth – but despite this, he couldn't force himself to fall asleep for the longest time. He must have dozed off at some eventual point, though, because one moment the backroom was dark and Other Josh was propped against 3 and 4, with 2 as a blanket - and the next thing he knew, the room was flooded with the paling light of the coming dawn and 5 was using his ass as a pillow.

Have a bucket of flat what, OJ.

"Thanks," OJ groused, and hauled himself out from under the five-Xanatos pileup. His elbows hurt like crazy. With a few choice curses, Other Joshua hoisted himself to his feet, coaxing the blood back into his arms with gentle rubbing. It had to be at least six o'clock in the morning right now, he reasoned, looking out the window.

Other Josh's stomach moaned in despair. _An hour is plenty of time to grab some _food_, _it reminded him at an obnoxious volume.

The notion of eating _anything _was still a bit of a sore subject for poor Other Josh, but his stomach was right for once. He hadn't eaten anything for at least a whole day. Of course, this meant he had passed the so-hungry-I-could-just-puke stage and settled into a nice, empty blankness - but he felt all weak and shivery, like he might collapse if he had to run around Shibuya any more. It was probably in his best interests to just eat something and get it over with. Preferably nothing long, thin, or suspended in liquid. Urgh...

Other Josh chanced another glance at the rest of his "pack," as if confirming they were safely asleep and not just pretending. They were, quite sufficiently, the definition of unconscious. Somewhat satisfied with this answer, Other Josh shivered and

staggered over to the refrigerator in the far back, hidden behind a pile of chairs and a row of boxes that served as a countertop.

Inside the refrigerator were the cheesecake ingredients – some eggs, some cream cheese, some cocoa powder, stuff like that. There was also a large quantity of meat stuffed in the bottom, dark and red, along with a few cans of sauce and spice and bowl full of suspicious-looking butter that sort of resembled a bunch of mashed-up fat deposits. There was a sheet of bubble wrap stretched over the meat, possibly to keep out freezer burn or something. OJ tried his best to not think too hard about the origins of this meat, instead training his sights on the eggs. There were like, six cartons of them. Faced with the sudden reality and tangibility of food – real food – there seemed to be an understanding between the boy's stomach, esophagus, and bowels, because they promptly imploded with hunger as one.

Hungry fingers darted in, elicited three eggs; even before the fridge's door had a chance to shut completely, Other Joshua was sprinting down the hallway. He began to peter out and weaken by the time he had entered the lobby, but that was from lack of nutrition.

The lobby looked shabby as ever. Other Joshua slowed down at this point and padded carefully across the stained carpet, casting wary glances at the sleeping Recepshua. The receptionist's legs were draped limply over the arm of his chair; his face was the face of a sleeping angel – or rather, an angel that had been put to sleep. Other Joshua found this thought uncomfortable, thinking of the only Angels he knew and failing to picture a cosmic veterinarian powerful enough to euthanize them.

He slipped outside. The morning air was chill and heavily laden with the positively Gucci smell of eau de icky grandmother; the winds had picked up, and Other Joshua shivered as they whispered their hands through his dirty hair. The sun had not yet risen, but the force field barring the sky cast down a faint golden glow that served as light enough. But the Other Joshua saw this stuff just about every morning, so it didn't really stand out to him.

On the other hand, the street had been lined with carts and stands and things at some point during the night. _That _was slightly odd.

OJ arched an eyebrow, but had nothing to say about them. Anyway, far more important than the carts... Other Joshua scanned the street from left to right, slowly, and once again, searing holes in the decrepit pavement with his dark eyes.

There were no clones to be seen.

Satisfied, Other Joshua took one egg and tapped it gently against the wall, cracking it. He slumped down against the door, brought the cracked shell to his lips and sucked out the cold, filmy mucous like it was nectar and ambrosia. When you're hungry enough, anything tastes good.

"_Gak_...!" ...Not really.

But what choice did he have? He wasn't about to eat a cheesecake full of Neku bits. He sure as hell wasn't gonna eat soup full of Neku bits, either. As a matter of fact, he wasn't even going to _touch _anything with Neku bits.

Other Joshua shook his head, tossed the exhausted eggshell as far as he could in a random direction and began work on the next. The thought of Neku stabbed him in the guts with a nauseating feeling of guilt. It was best to try and move on to other subjects, to try and remain a tactical thinker. Getting home...that was the priority.

Getting home.

The two units in room 27 - they were his priority. Other Josh sucked out the disgusting egg-glop thoughtfully. He had hidden his Reaper gun away in the backroom...it wouldn't take much to wound the Joshua, and the Neku wouldn't want to leave his Proxy's side – wait, wait, what was he thinking? Other Josh screwed his face up in general disgust with himself, slamming down another mouthful of egg. The two were only clones, and nothing more.

If he told himself that enough, he would eventually start to believe it.

...Right?

So, then. It was time to draft a plan, was it not? Other Josh only had today to get a hold of those two; it was better to strike sooner, when at least one was out cold. He had the advantage here, since he wasn't bound by the same restraints as the Josh units. The easiest thing to do would be to shoot the Joshua - the Neku units didn't seem to know what do do with themselves without Joshes around, and OJ was quite certain that a Joshua unit would just eat a wounded Neku. They seemed to get so excited at the smell of blood, after all.

Freaking sadists.

That decided it – he would shoot the Joshua unit first. The Josh wouldn't even be aware until he awoke, and by that time he'd be severely weakened by at least an hour of blood loss. Depending on where OJ got him, of course. The Neku would likely try to help his only friend, despite the fact that the Joshua would have eaten him first thing, were the situation reversed. (Thoughts like these kicked Other Josh in the diaphragm. _He _certainly wasn't a cannibal – and then he remembered yesterday, and the cold egg slime did flip-flops in his stomach.)

Capture would be easy, then: all Other Joshua had to do was offer some first aid, and the Neku would bring his friend right into OJ's trembling clutches. Then, Other Josh would knock them out somehow, starting with the Neku. After that, they could be tied up, and it would just be frosting from then on. Other Joshua cracked his final egg and dumped the cold glop onto his film-covered tongue, feeling determined.

It would be so simple.

He crushed the eggshell in his pale hand, looked surprised when the little shell bits stuck to his clammy skin, and consequentially tried to shake the crap off. It didn't work so well, and he had to go in manually, peel every individual shard off of his palm, and flick it away like a piece of lint. Yes, so simple. Other Joshua summoned up a shaky smirk and wiped his hand on his pants legs. His thoughts traveled to the gun hidden within the belly of an empty trash can as he got to his feet, wearily trying to reassure himself that this was the only way, they were only robots after all.

It would be so simple.

So, so simple.

He turned around and edged back inside the motel, nodding to himself.

Simple.

* * *

On the morning of the third day, our own Neku awoke to silence.

That seemed slightly odd, for some reason. He shifted and propped his bad self up on his elbows, knotting his already-menacing eyebrows even further together. It took a few tries to do this, because his arm felt incredibly weighty for some reason. Maybe it was sleep paralysis, maybe it was the morbidly-low temperature in the room, but something wasn't right...

He glanced to his side and BAM! His retinas were immediately assaulted by intolerable amounts of Joshua's "soft, regal features - they were almost cute, suspended in the sweet, innocent mask of slumber as they were." [_citation needed_] Actually, Joshua's nose was bleeding a crusty river of snot and his lips were kind of bruised-looking, which totally pissed away any cute point Neku might have assigned him – you know, if Neku was the type to have complete lapses in judgement.

But, in all honesty, the vacuum of unconsciousness sucked the condescending sneer right out of Joshua's face-meat, leaving only vanilla pudding in its wake. Vanilla pudding, if memory serves, is not the manliest of substances; it stands to reason Joshua looked like even more of a girl when he wasn't up and about. Because the universe really got off on making things awkward, Joshua's cold arms were wrapped around Neku's poor, poor arm, in much the same way as someone would hold a huggy pillow; and to further frost his cookies, it didn't seem like Joshua planned to be moving them any time soon.

Speaking of which, Joshua wasn't moving. At all. This was rather unfortunate for the Proxy, you understand. Icky-smelling silver curls tickled Neku's nose, offering up the delightful aroma of roadkill, sewer, and lavender, the latter possibly being the shampoo's final, miserably futile attempt at covering up the sins of the past or something. It made Neku's stomach curl a bit at the corners, this uncomfortable closeness, but...

That wasn't the problem here, was it? Something was _wrong_, and it wasn't just that Joshua's crusty face was drooling on his pillow. Something was horribly, terribly wrong.

After the initial _"__**!**__"_ wore off and was replaced by delicate revulsion, Neku tried to pull his arm free. But here's the thing – it wouldn't budge.

Joshua's cold grip was too stiff, his arms were too heavy, as if they had been carved out of blue marble. Neku struggled a little, growing increasingly annoyed. But, as the fog of sleep lifted and he began to see things more clearly, Neku gradually noticed that his partner's skin was livid, with dark veins winding up his arms like branches off the river Styx...

Around this time, Neku realized why the room was so quiet – Joshua was not breathing. People snore, people sigh, people mumble in their sleep – Joshua was perfectly silent and perfectly still. Further, there wasn't the faintest sign of a pulse in either of his rigid arms, and he was so, so cold...

The problem was not the distance. The problem was not that Joshua's hands were frighteningly cold and stiff, dark and bruised-looking. The problem was not that there was no human heartbeat thrumming in his depths; the problem was not that his chest didn't so much as twitch with respiration. The problem was not that Joshua was quite obviously dead.

No, the problem, the real problem was that Joshua's very, very dead corpse was _grabbing his arm_.

The realization hit Neku like a punch to the gut.

Joshua was...dead.

_Really_ dead.

Neku panicked, tried to yank his arm away – but it didn't matter, the rigidity of death had turned Joshua's hands into iron shackles. Seeing that he was anchored, Neku fought to stay calm.

_Joshua! They killed him! How do you kill a Composer? You're not supposed to kill a Composer! It's...it's not allowed! It's like, impossible! _screamed his mind, blazing through frightened thoughts at a mile per minute. _How could they have - how could someone just come in here and kill my friend? _(The general public's opinion of Joshua tended to improve exponentially whenever the bastard croaked.)

The general public dug his free fingers into the sheets, shaking a little. And by "a little," we mean "a whole metric crapton."_More importantly, how could I not notice? Th-that's just monstrous! And most importantly of all – THERE IS A CORPSE GRABBING MY ARM, THERE IS A CORPSE GRABBING MY ARM – a killer is on the loose – A CORPSE - ON MY ARM - if I make a sound I could be next – __**CORPSE – ARM – WAAAH-!**_

The liberation effort continued, albeit unsuccessfully. The republic of Neku was _not _pleased.

_GOOD GODS, _his mind screamed, tears beading at the corners of his eyes – tears of terror, mind you. _I'LL CHEW THESE ARMS OFF IF I HAVE TO, JUST GET THEM OFF OF MEEEEE-_

"Oh, Neku, dear...you're awake, are you?"

The republic of Neku briefly ceased function.

"That's a pity. I was hoping to get by without you noticing," said the familiarly scratchy voice. It was frighteningly close.

Neku reeled. _A Joshua unit, A JOSHUA UNIT..._

Now, he couldn't see the Joshua unit, but it was dark – very dark – and he felt an unsettling presence close nearby. There was what looked like a tall shadow, looming over him, like a black skeleton... Neku shrank back into the sheets, eyes wide, bells clanging in the

back of his head.

"Well, it can't be helped, I suppose. If you'd kindly stop trying to hide in your little den, this would be easier on everyone."

His heart beat frantic fists against its ribcage prison in terror. The Joshua's stiff, strange voice was everywhere at once -

"No? Hm. Fine, I'll just have to go on in there and shoot you in front of your sweet little S.O.. Hee, hee..." Neku didn't care to correct the Joshua unit at present, being overly preoccupied with pissing himself.

He cringed, he burrowed down in the blankets, he – wait. There was no avoiding it, was there? This was it, this was the end. No blankets would shield him from a bullet's bite. He was going to die, and that was that.

Neku squinched his eyes shut (he was familiar with this routine) and braced for the impact –

The gunshot –

A sharp crack that shattered the air into knives -

_BANG!_ –

And then nothing, nothing but blackness...

Blackness...

* * *

Only...

It didn't come.

"Ach, you're a horrible first dear. Dammit, Neku! Quit hiding behind those trees! I did _not_ bike all the way to the top of this mountain just to be outfoxed by a stupid animal. No, I do not care if you have a doe and six kids. Ugh...come back! Hey! _H-hey!_"

_...What the...? _Neku cracked his eyes open, blood roaring in his ears.

He felt the cold, stiff fingers buried in his armflesh twitch, quiver, let go. Then there was a rustling of blankets as the corpse rolled over in its sleep with a dull sigh, smacking its purplish lips.

"Get back here..." mumbled the corpse, stiff lips and lack of breath slurring his words a little. "C'mon...Neku dear, be a good little hoofed mammal and – well, fine! You can just trot _yourself _off to the taxidermist, I don't care...just _peaches_...easier on the poor

bike..._znn_..."

After a few tense seconds, the revelation dawned, and Neku smacked himself.

Joshua _was _dead. And he was dreaming about...uh, well, deer hunting, from the sound of it. The black shadow overhead was simply what remained of the lamp, which happened to be sagging against the wall all lopsided-like. In the dark, though, it looked like a tall, thin, black figure.

All of a sudden, Neku was kind of furious, so he brought his newly-freed fist crashing into Joshua's lungs. The crumpling sound upon impact was delightful.

"GYURPH-" Joshua's eyes snapped open and he gasped, clumsily fingering his ribs. "...ah-! AH! Auu...Nn...Neggu?" He shifted around stiffly and squinted in his partner's direction, breath whistling noisily through his cruddy nostrils. "Di_jou_...? Why'dja do that?"

"Joshua, are you aware that you are a horrible, horrible person?"

"...Hao?" For some reason, he was more eloquent in sleep than waking, but that was probably because it was seven-fifteen and the blinds were drawn.

Neku scowled and folded his arms, extremely pissed with himself. _That screwball is a coffin nail - the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade! _Neku fumed. _How on earth do you forget something like that?_ A faint "_Znnnggh_..." from his side told him that

Joshua was trying to go back to sleep, so Neku whacked him again.

"Au! Au- Nyeg-(HACK)-gu! Stoppit...imma derrekit flau-(HACK)-er..." The corpse kid's speech was punctuated with wet coughing.

"Time to wake up, Josh," Neku said unkindly, and smothered Joshua's face with his pillow.

"...Hey!" A bluish hand flew up and knocked the pillow out of Neku's grip. Neku's partner glared at him dully, blinking hazy purple eyes back into focus. "All wight, all wight, I'll wake uhp. Dorn't get yur _knickers_ in a _knot_..."

A few minutes later Joshua seemed to be more or less awake.

"I feel terrible..." he groaned. Indeed he did, and he sure looked miserable as anything, what with those bags under his eyes and the blotchy bruises. The poor guy tried to retreat back under the covers for some beauty rest, but Neku would have none of it.

"Wakey-wakey, Josh-Josh. You can fight it for one more day, come on. ...Tomorrow, when we're safe in our own dimension (and probably bumming around WildKat, instead of doing stuff for Mr. H to pay back for tricking him, because we both know we're, like, the laziest teenagers ever to walk the planet), I'll make you some soup or something."

At this, Josh-Josh perked up a little. While he may have been the most egregious cook on the planet, Neku was not. According to Mr. H, Neku baked cookies and muffins and stuff all the time and distributed them amongst his clique, because the food at WildKat tasted like napkins. (This was because the food at WildKat was constructed from napkins.) Anyway, Neku's confections weren't half bad, even if they were a little heavy on the chocolate. This said nothing of his soups, however, but Joshua wasn't extremely critical of soup. In fact, he'd bathe in soup if given the offer.

Well, Joshua perked up a little, in any case. "_Snff_...Okeh, Neggu." There was a particularly obese blob of phlegm perched just above his windpipe, tickling his airway with its juicy slime. Josh frowned and cleared his throat. "..._Ne-ku._ Neku. Ugh..."

They both hesitated, neither wanting to leave the safety of the bed. The room was so cold...

Eventually, they forged another one of those goofy alliances and untangled themselves from the bedsheets. They came tumbling to the frigid floor in the process, and the next few minutes were filled with increasingly-obscure curses. Joshua, especially - he was only wearing his briefs, remember? And they were _still _slightly damp from the shower.

Speaking of which...

"You don't need to take another shower," Neku protested as they wrestled for the prestigious right of first pisser. "You took one last night!"

"But my hair - _owch!_" Joshua cried in anguish, trying to wriggle out of Neku's sinewy clutches. A stiff hand flew up to his scalp, where his hair clung to his head in weird places. "It needs to _breathe_, it's having an _asthma_ attack-"

"Sucks to your ass-mar!" Neku insisted. "What about MY poor hair, huh? What about _Neku's_ Metrosexual Power Hour, huh? Huh? Outta the way, cream puff!"

It stood as a testament to how poorly Joshua felt, the fact that Neku could just kind of toss him to the side. Joshua hit the filthy carpet and his pride took a staggering blow to the chin. Neku swaggered on into the shower, feeling mighty fine, while Josh lay in a dismal heap, trying to be as pitiful as possible. Of course, the sympathy he gleaned from this endeavor was nil.

And so, it was with a heavy heart and no sense of victory that he trudged back to the bed. He fished around in the blankets for his flattened towel, noticing vaguely that his arms were sore. It felt like he'd been latched on to something bony and angular, instead of his squishy Haruko-san huggy pillow... Eh, well, whatever.

By now, puffs of steam were emerging from under the bathroom door, and you could barely hear Neku humming the refrain to "Bad Romance" over the hiss of the water. (He didn't know it very well - "La, la, llama's-mama, yee-haw ba-rako bama ...") With his towel draped over his shoulders like an old lady's shawl, Joshua hobbled over to the armory and started going through Recepshua's many identical shirts, trying to decide on which one looked the least contaminated.

Eventually, he wriggled his goosebumpy self into the starchy embrace of a shirt that, from the looks of things, had been buried in the back of the armory since before the dawn of time. Mothballs encrusted the edges of the garment, not unlike the way barnacles accrue on a shipwreck, and this gave Joshua a powerful aroma that disturbed his inner Noise like horrible, horrible gutpoison.

Neku took his sweet time getting ready, but that was to be expected. (He was undergoing a similar crisis as Joshua had the night before, only Neku's Shower Freakout was the Sing-Along version, to the tune of "Jingle Bells." _"Oh my god, oh my god, what happened to my hair? /Someone coated it with crap and I was not aware, oh!/People do not realize the sheer amount of care/to maintain and manicure locks so orange and austere./This doesn't seem that big a deal, but this secret I will share:/when you're an anime character You Gotta Have Cool Hair!" _Presently, he was frantically scrubbing the muck off his sharp kneecaps and carving out huge hunks in the soap as he did so.)

This, however, was beneficiary for our our other, freshly-dressed protagonist, Joshua, who now had a moment to turn his attention to the largely-unnoticed plastic bag sitting innocently in the corner. Yes, Joshua again, because I like him.

Get ready for a...

* * *

…..._FLASHBACK!_

Now, last chapter, if you'll recall, Josh had taken forever and a day to plod from the Udagawa wall tag mural back to home base – but this was not because he took periodic breaks to massage his feet, buy a snack, snap a photo of a passing blue jay, take a nap, contemplate the mysteries of the universe, brush his teeth and check tomorrow's weather conditions on his smartphone before setting out again. No, Joshua had actually walked down from Udagawa to the Pig Sigil Motel in fairly standard time.

He had just taken a pit stop on the way to grab some creature comforts. If it's not already obvious, Josh tried to be a few steps ahead at all times, and that medicine of Sota's had really been kicking ass for a while. Compared to how he had been in the morning, Josh had felt finer than a fawn in a field full of flowers – his throat had stopped hurting, his nose had stopped dripping (mostly) and his headache had vanished like a thief in the night. Shibu-Q Heads was directly en-route from Udagawa, and, while walking past its impressive white blockiness, Joshua had decided, "Neh, I better drop in and grab some at the pharmacy, as long as I'm here."

So he did.

Not very many people were in there. In fact, the shelves were mostly bare – it looked like they had been ransacked some time ago. The automatic doors had been nailed shut (somehow) so Joshua, not to be contained, had to throw a brick through the window and crawl in that way. This wasn't very hard, because he used to do this sort of thing all the time during his Reaper days, when he snuck out of HQ to perform vigilante acts of justice by the light of the vengeful moon. (His good-for-nothing roommate always locked him out, and Joshua invariably forgot his keypins, and so the well-intentioned waif would always wind up having to brick open the windows of WildKat and sleep on the floor. Mr. H didn't really enjoy tripping over him in the mornings, hence the necessity of the brick.)

Joshua had worked his way up to the pharmacy, which was oddly empty. I say oddly because Joshua kept hearing these weird scuffly noises, like Indians were scampering in the shadows, watching his every move and communicating with each other through hand signals. He figured he was just hearing things, because that didn't seem too unusual – people hear things every day, don't they? The shelvy things were all askew, as if people had been shoved against them; and there were empty bottles all over the floor, as if people had grabbed and used them as projectiles in some sort of faction-based war. The pills had been spilled everywhere, and in some places they had been crushed into fine powder – by trampling shoes, perhaps? There was no sign of Dr. Nishimura, and no sign of any of the other clerks, either. _Well, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody's around to hear it, it doesn't make a sound_, Joshua had thought, and leaped over the counter to sift through the piles of bottles.

Not all of them had been disturbed, in the end – near the back, there were rows and rows of DEF + medicine, which Joshua hated, and there were a few bottles of Mako Synergy rolling around, still stoppered up. After a few more minutes of slipping around on the pill-dusted crushed-glass remains of at least several generations in the field of prescription drugs, Josh hit the jackpot – rows and rows of Smilinol, hastily chunked into a box which lay askew on the ground, as if someone had tried to drag all the cold medicine out with them. There were mysterious splatters that looked like spilled coffee (kind of _reddish_ coffee) on the ground, here, as if someone had punched the coffee-drinking drug thief and dragged him out of sight.

It seemed like Shibu-Q heads had become a battleground of some sort, and Joshua just happened to be standing around in a quiet spot for the time being.

Joshua thought that he had better hurry this along.

He grabbed a bottle or two of Smilinol (just in case) and a box of bandages he happened to see just laying around. Josh planned to just sneak them out in his pocket, but then he had a thought – _What am I doing...? This isn't right! I need a bag to carry these in, ugh..._ Fortunately, there were a few plastic shopping bags ghosting about by the cash register thingy. Joshua plucked one choice bag from where it fluttered vainly in the a/c draft, trying to fly but anchored to the little price display thingamajig by a small tear. He stuffed his loot inside, and then he hi-tailed it to the counter as fast as he could, slipping and sliding all over the frivolous gobbledegook and what-have-ye. He hauled himself over the counter and back into the main store, making a beeline for the stairwell so he could – YAAAGH!

He slipped on some crushed pills and came crashing to the ground in a manner most painful. Joshua got the wind knocked out of his lungs with a weak _pfoo!_, yes, but it was nothing compared to the Vent Dive of a few hours earlier, so he was back on his feet within minutes and – okay.

Okay, he was definitely _not_ hearing things.

A shadow darted here and there, and _whoosh_ – Josh would whirl around, but before his retinas could affix the image into their unholy amethyst clutches, the shadow was already gone, like a ninja's gasp on a high winter wind. Rats.

Joshua backed up nervously, plastic bag at the ready in case he needed to whack someone with it.

And then, he ran for it. Like, seriously, we're talking peeling rubber. It was quite impressive for a guy who doesn't do the whole sweating thing, I must say.

* * *

So, anyway. That's what took Joshua so long.

Back in the present moment, Joshua had pulled out the Smilinol bottle and popped a pill or two. The back of the bottle said to take two for "extreme 6-hour cold and allergy relief," so he did just that. He also replaced his adhesive medical strips and stuffed the Smilinol into his pocket, for later.

Once the morning preparations were complete, our heroes had a conference on the bed.

Neku ran his hands over the bedsheets experimentally. His hands – no, the sheets hummed at his touch ever-so-slightly. With a thoughtful scowl, Neku leaned back against the wall and thought about this little escapade of theirs – today, it would be over. He could see the rest of his friends again, give Jeanne a good rub and maybe scratch under her chin, open his window and smell the city smog instead of the strange perfume of the rose-vines. He could hear the birds chirp and the cars drone and the people talking in a rippling cascade of voices on voices, see crowds full of faces he'd never seen before and probably would never see again. Just as it should be.

Joshua, meanwhile was trying to figure out how to turn the air conditioning off without getting out from under the blankets. He was too lazy to get up, and the longer he sat in one spot the warmer and cozier he got. It was truly the definition of a vicious cycle.

"All right, Josh. What are we doing today?" Neku asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Well," Neku said, "We're...gonna go home today, right?"

"If all goes according to plan, yes." The Composer leaned back against the windowpane, trying to angle himself within range of the temperature dial. It wasn't working very well.

Neku nodded slowly. "So, let me see if I have this straight: all we have to do now is wait until Mr. H shows up to get us, right?"

"Um, yeah," Josh murmured. He sniffled and – here, something caught his eye - he glanced out the window, brow furrowing.

"You don't sound very sure."

Truth be told, Joshua was not thinking about the plan at that moment. (He never had been the type to stick with the mission, if you'll recall.) Something was happening outside.

"So, uh, Josh," Neku said, trying to probe the strange silence billowing out of his partner in thick clouds.

"Neku, how about this," Joshua said, quite suddenly. "Let's go outside and walk around for a little while, hm?"

"...Why...?"

"So we can be doing _something _while we wait for Mr. H, obviously." Joshua sniffled and sprung off the bed, eyes suddenly bright with curiosity. The cold air hit him like a brick wall, but he looked like he could care less.

This observation, based on the context of recent events, made Neku feel a little uneasy all of a sudden. "Uh-huh. ...What's happening outside?"

Joshua shot him one of those disapproving mother looks. This one, along with the standard '_Who tracked mud on my floor?_' vibes, had strong undercurrents of '_Hell if I know!_' and '_Get off your ass already!_' "It would behooveyou and I to go and find out, wouldn't you agree?"

The thought occurred to just peek out the window, but Neku reasoned that they might as well just check it out in person if they were going outside anyway. It wasn't like they had anything better to do.

He hopped off the bed and trotted off after his partner – out into the hall, lock the door Nekkun, oh wait I have the key, quit calling me a cream puff, okay now off down the stairs, and down more stairs, bump into a Joshua, goddamn lousy stupid stairs, go past Recepshua, endure patronizing and stupid comments from Recepshua, "accidentally" kick over one of Recepshua's recipe stacks, flee out the door like a bat out of hell, etc., etc..

Once they were outside, Neku and Joshua took a minute to drink in the scene before them.

Golden light spilled down into the warm air in shafts, turning everything hazy and bright and warm. The rose-vines spilled their sickly-sweet aroma into the streets as usual, and this, combined with the golden-glass sky, gave the impression that the air was made of honey. But this was not the thing that caught our heroes' attention, oh, no. The strange thing was that Dogenzaka hill was lined with carts, the way an intestine is lined with filli – but not just any carts, no. They looked like wheeled vendor stands. There was a Joshua behind each one, calling out their wares in a giggly little advertisement, like some kind of medieval street fair. Odd smells mingled and wafted down the road; spicy and sweet, gross and pleasing; but still, they were nothing compared to the rose-vines' powerful grandma stench.

Neku looked at Joshua. Joshua looked at Neku. _What the hell?_

Immediately upon catching sight of our heroes, a particular Josh unit (wearing a hat that said "Hot As Sauce") started calling out to them in fervent excitement from the other side of the street. "Get your sauce! Come get your sauce! Certified sauce to make you feel certified in these dark times! Ask around the streets, they're certified! Cross-seas, all customers satisfied! Hey you guys! Yeah, you two! C'mere, my pretty little lights!"

Neku looked at Joshua. Joshua looked at Neku. _Oh, what the hell._

They scampered across the street, which was strangely devoid of cars. There were way too many clones walking around for any vehicle to get through, probably. Anyway, they cautiously approached the stand with "WTF" written all over their faces in magic marker.

The stand itself was rather unremarkable, but for the giant steel pot of bubbling...stuff, balanced on top of a camping lantern or two. These were being used to keep the brew boiling hot and delicious, apparently. There were cups and mugs and bottles all over the rest of the stand, and Sauceshua was twirling a ladle around like it was a marching baton. Neku raised an eyebrow at the bubbling stuff, taking a deep whiff of the spicy, warm aroma. Ah, what was this...chili? He decided to inspect.

"Neku, get your head out of there," Joshua scowled.

"_Step right up, grab a cup, fill it up with bubbling stuff; you just can't get enough~_" Sauceshua sang, twirling his ladle. "Come get your sauce, come get your sauce! Delicious, hot, made with chunks of this and that, made with lots of love!" He giggled girlishly and tapped a cup with his ladle, grinning. "A cup for a half-pound, payment due tonight. What do you say?"

"What exactly is this stuff?" Neku wondered, trying to sneak glances into the pot when Joshua wasn't looking.

"Tee hee hee hee~..." This question _tickled_ Sauceshua's ribs like nothing else, apparently. "Why, my dear, it has crimson chili, it had sweet, sweet onions, a drop or two of mystery liquid, _lots o' love_...and our secret ingredient~!" He cackled and winked at Joshua knowingly.

Joshua scowled at this.

"So the mystery stuff would be the chunks of meat, huh," Neku muttered, twisting up his bangs and gazing at the chunky, blood-colored stew. _Is it just me, or does that chunk look like a finger...? ...Nahh._

It looked vile, but it smelled really good, and Neku became acutely aware of the fact that they had somehow missed the breakfast bar mucking around with Recepshua. He looked at Joshua and turned on the puppy-dog eyes.

"Why are you making that face?" Joshua wondered, loudly. "You having lady cramps again?"

Neku stepped on the cream puff's foot quite suddenly, for no conceivable reason.

"_Ouch-! _...Anyway, ah...Mr. Joshua, um, why are you trying to get us to buy this...stuff, again?"

"It's sauce," the vendor said, his tone of voice suddenly quite testy. His disposition lifted just as suddenly as it had dropped, giving off a very bipolar impression. "It really brings out the...ah, the _flavor_ of your Neku, you know. Hee hee..."

That statement kind of slugged our heroes in the ear. Oh.

"I get complimented on this sauce all the time," Sauceshua continued dreamily, seemingly unaware of our heroes' sudden discomfort. "You rub it in a little, let it soak for a moment, and the flavor seeps into the skin...if you let it dry, you get a tasty crust, or you could just lick it off...it really compliments the natural taste of Neku in such a way that it tastes great, on any area and in any way you decide to apply it! Rub it in and suck it off the face, the back, the chest, the-"

Our Joshua sneezed loudly, mercifully cutting off the end of that sentence.

"S-stop," sputtered Neku. "That's enough, that's enough, we get it."

Sauceshua grinned toothily. "So...are you gonna buy some? Only a half-pound a cup!"

It seemed slightly nonsensical that they were charging in British money, but that barely meant anything. Joshua's lips went very thin. "N-No, thank you."

"_Gross_," Neku muttered under his breath, backing away from the pot of sauce.

"Aww," Sauceshua pouted, sticking out his lip and folding his arms. "But why not, cuties? C'mon, it gives you extra points and everything..."

"_No_," Joshua snapped. "Come along, Neku."

The two speed-walked as far away from that booth as quickly as they could, shuddering despite the warm air. Sauceshua sighed, shook his head, and resumed calling out in advertisement.

* * *

"I'm not cute," Neku grumbled once they were out of earshot. "Why do people keep calling me cute? I am not cute! Seriously! How am I cute? I am _not cute!_" He twisted his bangs for a moment and then, "..._Am_ I cute?"

"Adorable. On par with baby pandas. Fact, baby pandas could learn a thing or two from you."

"Ha. Ha. Seriously, though."

Joshua threw up his hands. "Honey, I'm starting to think these abominations would call a rotting carcass bloated with decay and throbbing with maggots 'cute.' Don't take it to heart."

"...But am I cute?"

"Oh, I don't know. Sure," Joshua said, waving a hand like he couldn't care less. Well, at least his Proxy wasn't ugly. But you know, whatever – it's Animeland, it's not like everybody's got lumpy flesh curdles like out in Real Life. It was really quite irrelevant in the scheme of things, anyway.

"That's not good," Neku growled, going back to his bang-pinchery. "How am I supposed to beat up people if I'm...yuck, _cute?_"

"With your fists, I suppose." Joshua rolled his eyes. "_Tsk_..."

Neku blinked, pulling his hand out of his hair. "Wait a minute... those clones don't have...oh, you know. How are they going to...?"

Joshua thought about this as they wandered aimlessly, walking past more street vendors. The two were completely ignoring the vendors' songs and cries and jingles and advertisements and whatever, and this resulted in a multitude of dirty looks being shot their way. Neku glanced nervously at one of the vendor units, who was watching our hero's behind and drooling excessively instead of trying to sell his cans of pepper.

"Call me crazy, but...when they look at me, it almost feels like they want to _eat _me," Neku muttered, pinching his bangs some more.

"That's called _lust_, dear," was Joshua's offhanded response.

Neku squinted and buried his head in his collar."Yeah...bloodlust..."

They continued to wade through the river of Joshuas and Nekus until they wound up in front of Shadow Ramen. There was a vendor who had a chocolate fountain set up and was selling mugs of chocolate fondue ("Only a pound each!"), and Neku was increasingly tempted to discreetly step back and nab a cup. Chocolate was his weakness, you know. Even though there seemed to be a crowd of Joshes in line, all clamoring for a cup, Neku was pretty confident that he could sneak one right out from under their upturned noses.

He was about to tap Joshua on the shoulder and begin coaxing him over to the chocolate stand when - all of a sudden, the crowd by the stand looked up and cracked a synchronized smirk, a cocky display that reminded the Proxy of Team MEAT.

Oh, no. "_Joshes?_"

The Joshes batted their eyelashes and came flouncing over, silver curls bouncing in the breeze. Their faces were scrubbed, their nails were sharp and shiny, their teeth were white and perfect. Apparently, they had all done their hair today: every coiled lock shone like platinum, as airy and weightless as an Angel's feather. Each clone had a crimson rose wound into their curls, and their liquid amethyst eyes looked particularly perky today. They looked like they were wearing necklaces, too – pearls, diamonds, tacky plastic, hunks of glass threaded together on bits of string. They practically sparkled in the sunlight.

Our Joshua ground his teeth ever-so-slightly. _Oh, okay. Not only are they clone-robots, they're also _vampires_. Fantastic. _

"Dude, why are you wearing poptabs on your neck?" Neku wondered, arching an eyebrow. Major fashion faux-pas right there, lemme tell ya.

"Because they're shiny, teehee~!" said Josh #2, coyly fluffing his hair.

"Oh, okay," said Neku, rolling his eyes. _You know what they say, crows love shiny things._ There were less Joshes than usual, today – one of their number was missing.

"I'm glad we found you, my dear little Ne~kun," said Josh #3, smirking. "We were just about to come and pick you up so we could take you with us..."

"Pardon? You aren't taking him anywhere," Joshua said, boldly interrupting.

The Joshes acknowledged him ever-so-slightly with a Sasuke grunt. "...Hn?"

"In fact, this is probably the last you'll be seeing of dear little Ne~kun." Joshua gave Neku a very impromptu pat on the head.

Neku sighed – Joshua had a total disregard for proper brotocol; everyone knows you're supposed to brofist and make explody noises instead of..._patting_ the bro in question on the...head. That was just...eugh. Seriously, what. Not that he and Joshua even remotely qualified as bros, but, just...what. What was that. _Patting_.

Joshua did not seem too hampered by this, seeing as how he had zero knowledge of the brotocol. Patting people was all he knew. It was in his blood. "We won't be sticking around; oh, no. We'll be long gone soon enough. You sweet little babies might as well go and find a new pacifier to suck on, if you get my drift." His smirk was quite self-satisfied by this point, as I'm sure you can imagine.

3 waited until Joshua was done babbling, and then he continued speaking as if nothing had happened.. "...After we finished up with our duties, of course."

"What duties?" asked Joshua.

He was ignored.

"...What duties?" asked Neku, casting a brief glance at his partner.

"Well, as the High Clergy, we have to make sure everything is ready for the Festival," said Josh #5, fiddling with his lightning bolt. He had a clipboard in his other hand and was clutching it to his chest demurely. "We have to make sure all the booths are operational, and all the transactions are recorded...that way we make sure everybody gets their due, and then there's the whole matter with the Tithing Ceremony tomorrow night..."

4 and 2 sighed noisily. "Keeping track of the tithes is so hard..."

"But if you don't keep track, then people will try and sneak by without putting up an offering," 5 reminded them with a cheerful expression. However, his tone betrayed that keeping track of tithes wasn't his favorite thing to do, either.

Wait a minute.

"Y-you're the High Clergy?" Joshua cried.

"_YOU'RE_ THE HIGH CLERGY?" Neku casually wondered.

"Yes~" sang the Joshes in unison, striking a pose. "No autographs, please~"

Our heroes felt this like a punch to the gut. _Oh, gods...what if we had been seen, covered in Pamela crust...? They would have thought we were defective, they would have thrown us in the pit...! _Neku thought frantically. He thought he just might have a heart attack on the spot.

Joshua was thinking pretty much the same thing, but he was more worried for his safety. "Ah...freshie, here; what exactly is this High Clergy?"

"Oh, we're Pamela's most trusted servants," Josh #1 said cooly, inspecting his stubby nails.

"We have the run of the place, freshie," 3 sneered, eyes glinting coldly. "Which means you better watch your attitude, hm?"

His worst fears confirmed, Joshua felt a deep sense of dread coil heavily in his innards. He _hadn't _been watching his attitude; in fact, he'd kind of been letting it run rampant this whole time...and if the Joshes were "Pamela's most trusted servants," didn't that mean they had the run of the place...?

Well, this threw a petite wrench into the conversation.

"That was the last booth in Dogenzaka," Josh #5 murmured, tapping his clipboard. "All right; I think it's time enough for us to take a break, don't you?"

The others nodded their curly heads exuberantly.

"All right~! C'mon, Ne~kun!" 2 and 4 rushed forward, grabbing Neku under the arms quite unexpectedly.

Joshua blinked, startled. Neku cried out, just as surprised as his partner. "H-hey, what are you doing...?"

He tried to wrest himself free, but here came another clone, and another, and suddenly he was being dragged off down past A-East by four inhumanly-strong pairs of hands. "Josh! Help!"

Joshua's foresight felt like it had caught on fire – it didn't take much imagination to predict where the Joshes were dragging the Proxy off to. He darted forth, intending to gallantly rescue his only buddy from the heinous fate awaiting him, but – before he could move, a slender hand shot out from behind and grabbed his shoulder...

* * *

Neku struggled in vain, thrashing about like an octopus in the throes of death. But, alas! It was all for naught. The Joshes had hands like steel shackles, and they were clamped onto every limb like a bunch of giant oysters. He felt as though he were a poor, poor GI Joe action figure that had been minding its business when suddenly it was seized in the unholy clutches of a Little Sister, who would undoubtedly proceed to perform unspeakable acts upon his massive, manly muscles – most likely involving lace and tea parties and stuffed animals.

Oh, gods, Neku hated stuffed animals.

But Neku was still alive and healthy, was he not? As long as there still was a drop of angsty emo hipster left in his blood, he would rebel against the mainstream – so why not rebel against the oh-so-commercial alternate lifestyle being foisted upon him now? And so, he continued to fight against his captors, rebelling and revolting as if it would do him any good. Unfortunately, this particular universe did not recognize spiral power as a legitimate law of physics, so of course Neku wound up being hauled into Lapin Angelique like a skewered pig into the kitchen.

...Wait a minute, Lapin Angelique?

Neku was suddenly gripped with a sense of all-consuming dread – the nasty sort of dread, the kind that trickles down the inside of your skin in black beads, choking you up with its icy, oily coils. The Joshes were giggling some nonsensical garbage about _how cute _rabbits were and how _simply precious _he would look in a maid outfit and _oh look here we are at the bunny ream is this not just the coincidence of the century tee hee har~_.

As they crossed the threshold into the Bunny Realm, Neku experienced a sort of explosion, triggered by the Fight or Flight response roaring to life with the guttural rasp of an old, seasoned Harley – suddenly, his arms were made of pure manly fire, and his heart burned with the passion of a thousand screaming souls punching destiny in the guts – he did all he could to wrest control of his limbs again, to pry his glorious soulfibers from the unfeeling grippers of the Josh clones...

But ah, now THESE grippers, they had titanium gripper enhancements. So all Neku got from that endeavor was a sore wrist and a severely damaged ego. The Joshes dragged him into the depths of the Twilight Zone without much trouble. But, hey, at least he tried.

The interior of Lapin Angelique was certainly something. It looked like someone had rounded up every elegant gothic-Lolita in Japan, corralled them into a room, and proceeded to blow them up. There was black all over everything, and purple; if it wasn't crushed velvet, it was lace, or crushed velvet _and _lace. Every last one of the lighting fixtures had been smothered beneath layer upon layer of lavender scarves. This diffused the light so that it gave your skin a corpse-like cast, and made the shop seem even more claustrophobic than before, if that was even possible. And this, of course, rendered the incense-thick air nigh unbreathable.

The clothes looked like huge black spiders from a distance, covered in lace and beribboned in bloody-red satin strips that were certainly not giving the place any kitschy charm whatsoever. The severed heads of mannequins, lovingly arranged in dismal rows atop the velvet-lined countertops, modeled the latest in bunny couture headgear, sporting generally out-of-date fashion – such as lacy bonnets, micro-crowns, and mini-top hats, which, although being delightfully steampunk, probably never existed in Victorian England to begin with. Drapes and gauzy curtains dangled from the ceiling, like bats and cobwebs and other signs of dilapidation. There were splatters of red paint on the walls in places, and excerpts from generally illegible period poetry had been stapled all over the back wall. It looked like something out of a menstrual teenage waif's Evanescence-induced fever dreams after a brutal head-on collision with any self-respecting boy's worst nightmare.(Hint: that means getting dragged into drag.)

And the bunnies.

Oh, gods, the bunnies.

Bunnies, bunnies everywhere – arranged in rows on the shelves, stacked on top of each other in messy heaps. There were bunny dolls all over the place. White bunnies, tan bunnies, pink and purple striped bunnies, patchwork bunnies, satin bunnies, Fluffy Buddy bunnies...there were bunnies on shirts, bunnies on hats; bunny parkas, bunny toys; bunnies hanged from the ceiling by black ribbon nooses; bunnies speared onto coathangers and jammed into walls; bunnies that had been carefully dissected and rearranged into hideous, malformed chim-hare-as; stupid punny bunnies laying in pieces on the ground, pieces of soft fluff ghosting about like so many tumbleweeds.

Clearly, the domain of a madwoman. Neku went limp with despair, eyes washing bleakly over the dismal scene. The Joshes had him by the wrists and the ankles and were dragging him around like a lioness drags a dead deer. He growled as Kipper Snack abused similes like a preteen Dean Koontz.

The Joshes dragged him along, like I said, and since the addition of a Vitruvian Neku to their little phalanx didn't exactly convert them into a compact little posse, they had to kick some of the displays out of their path. This slowed down their progress considerably. Neku found himself angsting in silence, because his anorexic body had rendered his struggles about as effective as a wriggling piece of toothpick. _Why can't I break loose? I _should _be able to break loose! Come ON! I can break loose from Cream Puff McFattycakes, but not from the Pussycat Dolls? Gods, I am so hitting the gym when I get home. I am going to hit that gym so hard. I am not going to merely hit that gym, I am going to _punch it in the face.

Neku ground his teeth, wondering vaguely why Cream Puff McFattycakes had not shown up to save him yet. Well, whatever. He was doomed, anyhow.

Suddenly, there arose a suspicious sound. Neku glanced to the side and saw – it was the skittering of cockroaches, the writhing of worms, the wriggling pulsations of a thousand maggots in a three-day old carcass. It was a slithering sort of shadow, sliding out as if formed from the nebulous tendrils of darkness itself. A young girl, probably not over eighteen, seemed to materialize – porcelain skin, chocolate curls, and charming blue eyes that looked at him wrong. Her face was just wrong. Something about her was not right.

She clutched a bunny doll in one alabaster hand, and held a pair of hedge clippers in the other.

Neku shuddered.

Her lipstick-smeared lips twisted into a crazy grin. "Hello~, Joshes~..." Her eyes kept darting around, like those of a trapped animal. But still she smiled.

"Greetings, Princess K," drawled the troupe of clones, who were now trying to kick a rather stubborn display of Goth Bondage coats out of the way and not succeeding very well.

The girl whimpered softly and dropped her clippers and doll to the ground, wringing her hands. "Is this another one?" she chimed in a childlike voice.

"Yes, Princess K," drawled the troupe of clones, who were now trying to knock the display down with poor Neku.

"Oh, good. Princess K is h-a-p-p-y, happy," said the clerk, quietly. "Pamela will be happy too...tee hee~..."

"Of course, Princess K," drawled the clones, who were now becoming rather cross with the bondage coats. They didn't seem to pay the creepy girl much mind.

Her eyes flicked around as she stood, wiping her hands on her dress as if they were covered in blood. "Tomorrow is the tithing ceremony," whispered Princess K, crouching down and picking up her bunny. "Lady Pamela will want a sacrifice...Princess K is a dutiful servant, Princess K gives her Lady Pamela only the finest of the bunny realm, ehe...Lady Pamela..._my _Pamela...ehe..."

She fiddled absently with the rabbit toy. Her eyes were fixed on Neku, but he got the strangest sense she wasn't truly seeing him.

Truly, the behavior of a madwoman.

The Joshes eventually slayed the bondage coats and dragged poor Neku onwards. Presently, they broke into the dressing room - the women's dressing room, natch. Gotta humiliate our hero as much as possible.

Quickly and effortlessly, they filed in, like a stream of oil. Being crowded in with four Joshuas felt slightly comparable to being stuck in an overcrowded elevator in a house of mirrors. The clones grinned eerily and tossed Neku inside, where he wound up sprawled uncomfortably upon a purple cushion with approximately six elbows in his face. There really was no room for negotiations.

And this was why the Joshes were able to just reach out, grinning, and tear nearly all of Neku's dirty-yet-servicable clothes off in a whirl of sharpened nails and shiny eyes. Neku shouted incoherently and started thrashing around. "No! H-hey, NO! Stop! Hey! What the hell? RRGH! HEY—HEY NO, OH MY – WHAT – _WHAT_ – STOP THIS – _**not the phones, HANDS OFF THE PHONES!**_"

It was no use – those aerodynamic and heat-resistant threads were shredded like cheese in seconds. Hell, they even ripped his belt in two! There was really no need for that.

Neku's thrashing around and shouting expletives ensured that the Joshes were unable to reach his boxers, thank the gods. They backed off and stood in front of the door for a minute, waiting for his ragefit to cease. It would have continued until the universe collapsed within upon itself, of course, but Neku got tired. He barely has any body fat to burn, don't forget. Once the limbs weren't as flaily and the mouth wasn't half as dirty, #2 and #4 backed out of the dressing room and retreated to the depths of the store, no doubt seeking to harvest something wrought of lace and frills and pure estrogen. When they returned, they would most likely proceed to engage in that most heinous and terrible of pasttimes..._dress-up_.

God.

Damn.

It.

Even after it became clear he had plummeted over the point of no return long ago, Neku did not stop fighting. No; if he was goin' down, then he was goin' down swingin'. He ripped the antique-looking mirror off the wall and threw it at the two remaining clones; he grabbed his shredded boots and threw them like cement bricks; he even grabbed the half of his belt that still had the buckle and tried to use it like a knife.

In five seconds, the mirror had been effortlessly dodged, the half-belt had been allocated to tying his skinny wrists together, and the Joshes were _not _amused.

#3 smiled wickedly and picked up the tattered remains of Neku's boots. It is common knowledge that Neku's boots weigh twelve pounds apiece; they are often likened to Hessian boots in this regard. Neku wore such heavy shoes as part of his ninja training, because all Japanese do that - just like how all Americans wear baseball caps. _It is tradition_.

"Someone's been a naughty boy," sneered the clone, turning the boots over in his hands like they were spun out of candyfloss. His grin sparkled, like a drawer full of knives - his eyes slid over the struggling form of the writhing angsthole, who had been hopelessly pinned underneath #4's weight. "I think I know just the type of chill pill to administer, hee hee...what do you think, Fourly?"

#4 sighed and shifted a little, examining his sharp nails. "I think I'm sick of these kneecaps digging into my bum-bum. They're most ludicrously ouchie-poo! Be a dear and fix him up post-haste, would you?"

Neku continued to struggle as he watched #3 slowly advance, holding the boots out. The clone's eyes sparkled strangely and coldly, like amethyst discs; his grin looked like it had been carved into a clay face and filled with glass shards. He shouted some words that don't even translate to English, garbled out some hackneyed death threats, tried to gun him down with a ferocious death glare, but – Neku's effort was pretty much rendered moot by this point.

The last thing Neku remembered seeing was the clone hold the boots over his head and let go.

Suddenly, his entire life – nay, his very _sole _- flashed before his eyes and -

He blacked out.

* * *

**A/N:** After a hot, dreary day in the It's So Wonderful crappsaccharine land mines, come to Joshua Trips to kick back and relax with lighthearted parody action!

...Wait no this isn't exactly lighthearted anymore. Hedge clippers? Cannibalism?

We need to fix our ad campaign.

How about - _This summer on Cartoon Network, we're giving you exactly what you want!_

_DOUBLE THE DEPRESSING, DOUBLE THE DARK_

_DOUBLE D POWER HOUR - All new episode of ISW, followed by an all new episode of JT_

_Fridays at 9, only on Cartoon Network_

...nah, that's not right


	15. In which Gay Times are Had, pt 2

_**JOSHUA TRIPS**_

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: IN WHICH NEKU AND JOSHUA HAVE A GAY OLD TIME, PT. 2

The Story So Far: Blah blah blah, so Joshua and Neku went and got themselves stuck in an alternate Shibuya, one full of roses and spiders and crazy cannibalistic cyborg-clone creepers. This cut into their spa schedules, so they immediately hatched a plan to GTFO. Now, Mr. H always lurks around on UGharmony, prospecting for waifus. Joshua has observed this happening and one time he was hit by several cars in rapid succession because Mr. H was too busy ogling the waifus to come save him. (Sho stuffed carrot cake in Joshua's jetpack and threw him off a building, if you must know.) Drawing upon this knowledge, Josh-Josh hatched an escape plan that involved setting up a "date" (or more correctly, a "trap") for poor old Mr. H, who probably is expecting a hot tsundere waifu and not two whiny punks. Poor old dog.

Anyway, Joshua and Neku are just killing time before Mr. H finds their profile and sends them a message, but it seems they can't even manage to do that much without screwing up...

Rating: Still T

Of note in this chapter: Neku gets groped. Joshua complains about burgers. Josh #1 gets in on the action.

Genre: Parody/Adventure

* * *

Meanwhile, our Joshua was having a rough time.

Our Joshua was currently locked in a brutal wrestling match, tangled with an adversary _who apparently shared his rather odd fixation with Supermask. _The adversary in question happened to be one of Neku's stupid foofy clone harem, and since our Joshua had not assigned numbers to the clones in his head, he had no idea which one it was. But for your benefit, my dear reader, it was Josh #1 currently bending our protagonist into fantastic shapes.

Strangely, Joshua did not appreciate being tied up in knots as if he was some kind of balloon animal. Gibbering and griping in rage, our protagonist writhed vainly and kneed his assailant in the guts, a move he'd learned from Neku. His kneecap knifed straight for the clone's navel, but midway through its flight the adrenaline grabbed his leg nerves and shook them around in a jangling manner, skewing the arc of motion somewhat.

Which is to say his aim was terrible and it hit the clone a little too low. Poor Josh #1 let out a sharp rush of air and fell over, much to our protagonist's satisfaction – what a _jerk_.

Our Josh was soon scrambling to his feet, brushing his jeans off, fixing his hair, getting abruptly tackled, locked in a deadly embrace, rolling on top of the clone, beating the crap out of the clone, scrubbing the clone's face in the grit while crowing like a rooster, getting bucked off by a sudden undulation of the clone's spine, writhing in the dirt, breaking a nail (!), slapping the clone in the face, getting slapped by the clone in the face, pulling the clone's hair while kicking it in the shin (somehow), getting shoved into a trash can, getting his face mashed into the wall, having his bandaid viciously ripped off, having a clod of dirt thrown at his head, getting his ears tied in a knot, shouting casual suggestions at the top of his lungs, socking the clone in the face, shoeing the clone in the face, footing the clone in the face, and generally throwing a bitchfit. The clone was mostly exasperated by this.

"Will you just sit down already!" he shrieked.

"To obey your orders would be to nauseate me, filthy clone scum," our Joshua spat, jeering like a cheeky fifth grader from the relative safety of the trash can.

The Other One growled and smacked our protagonist upside the head with a trash can lid. "Insufferable pri-"

"I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS KIND OF BULLSHIT!" Our Josh was now throwing garbage at the Other Guy, who was shrieking in terror.

The Other Guy eventually wound up hoisting poor Joshua out of the trash can by his ears and wrestling him to the ground. They tumbled around like this in front of A-East for a while, kicking up dust with flying heels. Neku's plight became less and less of a memory and even less of a ghost.

See, I'm being post-modern here. And therefore cool, thanks to the fact that I am so, so very post-

"This entire thing is post-modern, you dope!" our Joshua griped. His voice was slightly muffled by virtue of the fist firmly fixed in his teeth. "_All_ parody with a degree of self-awareness is post-modern!"

Josh #1 looked up from punching our protagonist in the mouth long enough to give him a quizzical glance. "Who are you talking to?"

"The – _urk_ – narration..."

"..." It was at this point that the seeds of doubt were planted in Josh #1's mind; the seeds of doubting our Joshua's sanity, that is. His face softened vaguely in sympathetic confusion.

His arm softened too, and our Joshua was able to smack the punch out of his mouth and tackle the creep to the ground. They hit the dirt with a mighty collective OOF, and proceeded to kind of writhe like asphixyating fish for a few seconds. During this embarrassment, our Joshua managed to clamber up on top of the other's abdomen and pin him down with his baby fat. He attempted to wail away on the Other Josh's face, trying to be all cool and karmic – but he didn't really want to_ touch_ the guy. His breath smelled like old, wet eggs drenched in sticky saliva, for one thing. And thus, our Joshua elected to begin his onslaught with a delicate, tentative punch to the Other Josh's teeth.

Other Josh hissed and bit him.

"NEEEHHHH! YOU BARBARIAN! YOU _DOG!_" Our Joshua yanked his hand away and stared at the slightly-crooked teeth marks, whimpering stupidly. "Ew, ew, ew...ewww ew ew...you bit me! Have you no _dignity?_ Have you no _shame? _...Eeew ew ew..."

Josh #1 seized this opportunity, bucked his hips, and sent our Josh flying off. He scrambled over to where our Josh was struggling to his feet and kind of rock-climbed up our hero's thighs, moaning like a maimed zombie. (It would make more sense if you were standing there, really.) This action, illogical as it was, put enough extra weight on our Joshua's knees that he was suddenly on the ground again, getting punched and smacked all willy-nilly.

Our Josh could not stand this and kicked the Other Guy off, breathing raggedly as he quickly stood up again. The Other Guy jumped to his feet as well, and soon they had their fist-talons locked in a deadly embrace. They pushed and shoved on each other like sumo wrestlers - _exactly_ like sumo wrestlers – but it was a stalemate, since they had exactly the same skinnyfat phenotype and exactly the same amount of strengthliness points. (Two.) They circled around, hands straining and pushing, foreheads practically touching, teeth bared and growling. It looked kind of like Josh was practicing "fierce" faces in the mirror again.

"Stand down, clone vermin!"

"No, _you _stand down, dear; I insist!"

"Dolly-head! DOLLY-HEAD!"

"YOU HAVE YOUR MOTHER'S THIGHS, HAIRY PAUCHER!"

Suddenly, the oh-so-witty (this statement is sarcastic) banter was interrupted by an intensely manly scream of RAGE. It kind of ripped through the air, not unlike a gunshot; except, if we're gonna go with firearm metaphors, this particular scream was honestly more like Touhou. Every object in the vicinity was hit with a barrage of shrieking soundwaves and raging ragefires. It was a scream that Joshua recognized, strangely enough. It was the scream with which Neku had exploded after the conclusion of the final week. It was the scream that had knocked the hats off of all the RealGrounders in a 12-foot radius; it was the scream that had heralded Neku's victorious return to the crapsaccharine world of the living. It was the scream that, on an aside, just so happened to be Joshua's ringtone.

"_WHAT – THE – _**HELL!**"

Our hero and his adversary froze in the middle of their bizarre courtship dance, letting that horrifically loud shout ripple through them, vibrating their bones and rattling their teeth. Our Josh stared at the Other One for a split second, eyes wide with the "ohshit" emotion. Immediately following this brief silence, our Josh punched the Other One in the face and ran like a bat out of Uzbekistan.

Other One hit the dirt with a _whumph_, and for a moment he just lay there, eyeballs swimming in a purple haze of pain. He needed to get up, but his arms and legs were clogged up with the leaden sludge of despair. Ugh...this was not going according to plan.

Meanwhile, our Joshua was tearing down the slummy street-thing of A-East, skidding on the silty dirt, slipping and sliding on the occasional plastic bag or periodical that happened to be ghosting about, and, overall, just running like a drunkard. The feelings of dread spurring him onwards were probably only present because of the fact that, whatever Neku's humiliating punishment might entail at the moment, it was practically guaranteed he'd take his angst out on our poor Joshua later. Because, in the end, it was all because of him and his lousy goddamn stupid DNA. Joshua didn't know about the reader, but _he_ certainly didn't want to sit through another long, painful paragraph describing him getting beaten up.

Obviously, the only way to prevent this getting-beaten-up paragraph from ever being written was to be a big damn hero.

Now, it begs mentioning that A-East was not a particularly classy neighborhood by any stretch of the imagination. It was kind of shifty. If A-East was a person, it would probably be the type that you could always find hanging out on the same street corner, the kind that would invariably wind up trying to sell you dubious-looking laser pointers whenever you walked by. A neighborhood like this just doesn't _come_ equipped for tactical warfare. The doors just aren't _fitted_ with electro-lock systems. The windows just aren't _made _of plexiglass.

Now, take your average skinnyfat oxy-moronic Joshua. He weighed about one-hundred-ten pounds, give or take a few. One hundred and ten is a high amount of pounds, in case you didn't know. It's a hell of a lot more than whatever a brick weighs, that's for sure. And in case there's any confusion in your pretty little mind, dear reader, Joshua's surface area was _slightly _greater than a brick's.

Now, take the flimsily-thin glass windows of Lapin Angelique. The most these babies had ever had to stand up against were a few raindrops. They were cheap windows, because Lapin Angelique was in a cheap lot. The construction was cheap, the area was cheap; therefore, it was only logical that the windows were cheap as well. These windows were also newbie windows; they had never been bricked before. Because, seriously, who would rob a Lolita boutique? Okay, YOU might, but you've gotta remember that this takes place in an alternate universe full of people with (ahem) _skewed _priorities.

Keeping these two objects in mind, a quick physics calculation or two brings us to this conclusion: Joshua = greater than brick. Brick = greater than window. Therefore, Joshua = utter window bitch-enslavement.

You see, according to science, Joshua is the window pimp king.

So, armed with this knowledge, Joshua floored it, blazing through the filth-clogged bowels of the A-East area like an industrial-strength laxative. Lapin Angelique's dingy, rose-entwined walls were rapidly approaching, the poor, innocent windows included. Joshua put on a burst of speed the likes of which the world has never seen (from him), braced for impact, and jumped -

no -

–he CRASHED right through that smotherfudger, smashing it into a bazillion deadly pieces of cheap dollar-store glass. In slo-mo, of course – and I'm not even kidding, here. It was like some kind of cosmic ripple had been triggered with this action, forcing time itself to slow down, as if it needed the extra minute to process this unexpected turn of events. Somewhere, out in the distant expanses of spiral space, a baby cried; Rossiu lied; and people died. But right here, right now, Joshua was being Max Payne. He crashed through that sunovabitch window and soared, like a majestic eagle, directly into a meticulously-arranged, exceedingly top-heavy display of rabbit plushies.

Joshua had just enough juice left in his Bullet Time meter for his eyes to widen in horror. With a wicked _KTHWUMP_ fit for the history books, the two joined in unholy union and the entire display came toppling down, burying our protagonist in a brutal deluge of soft rabbit ass.

Soft.

Rabbit.

ASS.

"_Neeehhhhhhhhhhhh!_" Joshua struggled around in the pile of lapin glutes frantically, plump plush posteriors intimately caressing his skin with the soft touches usually reserved for lovers – Erasure seemed imminent, until one flailing hand connected with something solid. O, exultation! Joshua hauled himself out of the pile of stupid rabbit toys, slipped on one of the goddamn things, stumbled into a rack of lacy bonnets and somehow managed to wind up on the floor again.

_Like a boss._

* * *

While our Joshua was busy being Max Payne's retarded cousin, our Neku was causing a fiasco of his own not five meters away.

He had been knocked out by his own Squeenix shoes in the last chapter, if you haven't forgotten. Imagine if that happened to you, for a minute – you're whacked on the head, you black out, and when you finally come to in the next chapter, you discover that you have been "dressed up." Imagine the horror – waking up on the floor of the dressing room, surrounded by a bunch of giggling Joshuas – all with messed up hair and flushed faces – hauling yourself stiffly to your feet, seeing yourself in the mirror: and suddenly, you see you have platform shoes on your feet, snow-colored stockings pulled over your knees, a ridiculous ivory ribbon tied round your waist, a black corset dress with white trim and delicate lace tickling your thighs, a frilly collar-thingy around your neck, and, to bring this travesty to truly tragic levels, one of those mini top hats perched jauntily on your head.

What do you do?

What did Neku do? He didn't do anything much at first; he just kind of stared at the abominable sin reflected in the mirror, not truly comprehending. With shaking fingers he reached up and fingered the lacy ribbon tied under his chin, the ribbon that anchored the jaunty hat to his miserable skull. His reflection mirrored the lace at his own neck, twitching in time with each finger-touch.

That was...him.

HIM.

This realization had a bit of a paralyzing affect, turning Neku's legs into stone and his spinal column into ice. All he could do was stand and stare, blinking dumbly.

"Aww, don't you just look absolutely charming~!" chimed Joshes 3 and 5, clapping their hands in that belittling way, almost as if they trying to grab a handful of Neku's Cutie Beams and stuff them in their ears for safekeeping.

"Absolutely precious!"

"Like a little baby panda bear!"

The Joshes surrounded him in a ring, fencing him in so he couldn't escape. Their giggles and contrived gushings swirled around our Neku's head in a maelstrom, fueling the burning ragefires that smoldered eternally in his pits.

"Tee hee hee~! Oh, Ne~kun, love, you're so adorable in that outfit, aaah~!" Josh #2 squealed, striking a pose that looked as though he were attempting to perform an Anime face-fault in Real Life. "I'm soooooo _jelly!_"

The way these monsters talked was so condescending it made Neku sick. He stood there, shaking, trembling all over, fists clenching and unclenching in the rhythmic manner that madness will sometimes manifest in. He stared at his reflection. His reflection stared back.

"Oh my giggly goshness, Neku-Nekky, you're so uber kawaii desu~"

"Tee hee, I have GOT to take pictures!"

_Why are you just standing there?_ Neku's reflection seemed to say. His face twisted into a pained grimace. _Look at them, giving you nothing but steaming, smelly handfuls of this crap! Look at you, just licking it off their fingers like it's chocolate cheesecake! Why? Why are you letting this happen? Why are you letting these actions continue to happen?_

Neku felt his blood begin to bubble and boil in his arteries; conversely, the blood in his veins turned to whistling steam. Heated by burning ragefires, a volcanic, angry blush turned Neku's cheeks the color of boiling lobsters.

"Aww, don't be embarrassed," said Josh #3 in a silky voice. He sidled up to Neku, completely heedless of the boy's ever-blackening aura as he laid his pale hand onto Neku's shoulder with gentle tenderness. "It's not your usual style, I'll agree..." #3 slid his hand down to the small of Neku's back in a practiced sweep. "However..."

The clone's cold fingers inched downwards, every touch burning on Neku's skin.

"Hmmn~...However..."

A curious transformation swept over Neku Sakuraba at this moment. His pores opened up and started blasting out jets of white-hot steam, peeling the paint off the walls and fogging up the mirror. His hair turned into a corona of fire, red and gold sparks spraying onto the carpet and setting it aflame in the shape of a pentagram. His eyes were suddenly hurricanes, his voice the howling wind and his irises rings of Spell Trigger loaded with six consecutive Chain Lightnings. His intestines contorted into mandalas of hatred; his eyelashes became obsidian lances of pure pain; his pubes curled into little angry faces. He was surrounded by an aura of darkness so black and impenetrable it practically engaged in giantess voreaphilia with the few light waves dumb enough to enter the room.

Neku's irises slid into the corner of his eyes and locked on to #3's pallid, calculated expression in exactly the manner that a sniper might lock on to his target. The glare shooting out of those tortured-looking eyes was absolutely terrifying; it practically turned the breathable air into a Bose-Einstein condensate – hell, you could feel the rapidly-forming superclusters of atoms beginning to suck the oxygen out of the room. The temperature dropped to levels that made the Arctic look like the Bahamas._ Don't you DARE_, this glare seemed to say. _Don't you DARE, you pig disgusting pettifogger! Whatever you're going to do – don't you DARE, don't you DARE, whatever it is, don't you DARE do it, so help me gods, I AM WARNING YOU-_

Josh #3 ignored the poor dude's reaction, seeming to brush Neku off as harmless. He pressed his cold, perfect lips into the shell of Neku's ear and whispered softly, "I still think it's hot."

And then he squeezed Neku's ass.

That was the final fucking straw in the fucking Sahara, gosh dang it to heck! Consider the camel's back broken to pieces – no, shattered into smithereens – nay, _obliterated_ into a milky haze of sub-atomic particles! Let only quarks remain to conjure memories of that metaphorical camel's insipid spinal column!

Neku threw his head back and howled at this most awful of transgressions – his rage, his pain, and all of his sorrow; his humiliation, his anger, his mild discomfort! His black aura exploded, bursting out and rushing through the air like a pyrocaustic cloud, consuming everything in its path like a corrosive miasma of death.

"_WHAT – THE – _**HELL?**"

The shout that ripped from the boy's lungs at this moment seized the air by the shoulders and gave it a good shake. The lighting fixtures on the ceilings trembled in utter pants-wetting terror; the vampire dress assortment toppled over and burst into flames; plaster peeled off the ceiling and fell to the ground like flurries of ANGER DANDRUFF SNOWFLAKES; the ground buckled and writhed beneath their feet as if recoiling in fear; in distant galaxies, suns exploded and planets collapsed; comets collided and asteroids aggressed. Several, less-interesting alternate universes immediately shut down, wary of the impending shitstorm. Fortunately, this was the end of the AU where nobody brushed their teeth. Unfortunately, this was also the end of the AU where everyone wore shoes on their hands. Oh, well. Nobody cared about those ones, anyway.

Neku's outburst was so passionate and thick with hatred that it succeeded in manifesting as a sort of sonar pulse; a shockwave, if you will. This shockwave shot out in all directions, radiating from Neku like a tremor from the epicenter of an earthquake. It hit the Joshes hard enough to make them stumble for a second.

One second. That was all Neku needed.

You can imagine he was practically super-Saiyan with rage by this point. Neku hurled himself at those miserable clones, screeching incoherently with rage – well, it only _sounded_ incoherent, to be honest. In actuality, Neku was attempting to summon hateful elder gods from beyond the yonic voids of our lovingly-crafted space. "JAALESH SH'TYRWNHE OLGHKJKFLRTH AA'AASHFRIMASHKT FIRKRAAG X'XZXZLLYT CRAGHACKADOR'LL ZZNZT!" He didn't waste time – he grabbed the dressing room chair (you were supposed to sit on it while you pulled up your lacy stockings) and chucked it into the middle of the knot of clones, who kind of had to scramble out of the way to avoid being bonked rather excessively about the face. Neku, deep down in his subconscious, remembered that these Joshes were not to be taken lightly; he knew he couldn't possibly beat the crap out of these titanium-enhanced monsters like he so wanted to.

No, if he was going to escape this nightmare, there was only one way.

He had to run.

And so, Neku chucked that chair into the middle of the clones' little formation and bolted through the opening when they scattered like cockroaches. Suddenly he was in the main part of the Lapin Angelique store, crashing through displays and gargling noisily, like some kind of young Frankenstein's monster. Somewhere, off in the distance, Neku heard Princess K scream. He struggled around, scrambling ahead, trying to fight his way through the overgrown forest of black petticoats and frilly parasols – he _knew _the Joshes were right behind him, he knew it! He could hear them screeching things like "DEAR DEAR DEAR COME BACK," over and over and over, and – _ouch! _#2 just grabbed at his knee but only nicked it, sharp fingernail slicing through the skin.

It would take too long to get to the door. So Neku made a beeline for the nearest window, putting on speed as best he could while negotiating the piles and piles of Lolita garbage. This basically amounted to smashing through everything in his path in a desperate bid for freedom, because – screw property damage, he was a victim of sexual harassment, and he was gonna file a report made of fists and pain, wrap it up in an envelope of expletives, stamp it with the Seal of Soreness, address it to the management, mark that bitch with a PRIORITY stamp and drop it _in the freaking mailbox_. And absolutely_ nothing _was gonna get in his way._ NOTHING._

There was an absolutely ridiculous CRASH at the other end of the store; Princess K screamed again, covering her face with her arms and huddling into a little ball, wailing "Like a banshee! Like a banshee!" over and over.

Neku did not notice hardly any of this; nor did he notice when one of the rabbit toy displays came crashing down; nor did he notice when a strangely familiar figure arose from the pile of plush rabbit asses only to knock over the lacy bonnets; nor did he notice that strangely familiar person start yelling crossly and join the chase. No, Neku Sakuraba was a man on a mission.

"Get me out of this ***ing ****-sniffing ****-licking **** of a **** ***ing f****cracker ***ing *****tardly re****ed s*****vant ****ing NIGHTMARE!" he screamed, leaving a column of destruction and a bunch of asterisks in his wake (yes, we_ needed _to bleep those words out) as he plowed through the final shirt rack and kind of awkwardly skip-hopped into the windowpane, shoulder first. It gave way pretty easily – _keRASH! _- and Neku tumbled outside into the sun and the dirt and the rose-vines. Needless to say, he hit the ground running.

Our Joshua, freshly arisen from the pile of bunnies and bonnets, didn't want to risk cutting himself on the jagged glass of Neku's window upon leaving the boutique; so, he smashed through a completely different one.

The Joshes used the door.

Our Joshua stumbled slightly when he hit the ground outside – he landed on his ankle kinda funny, and the resulting pain jabbed through his leg - and staggered off to join with his partner once again. Neku was trying to run in platform shoes and had discovered, in a most unpleasant and hard way, something interesting – if he negotiated the cracks in the sidewalk with anything less than the elegant and chary poise of a pure-blooded young noblewoman, he would come crashing down and smash his chin on the pavement.

It wasn't long before Josh caught up to him. Thus, our two protagonists had formed a cohesive unit once again.

The Joshes, having politely exited the boutique through the correct portal (what a bunch of losers), stared at the retreating backs of their prey. It only took an instant for their disgusted expressions to contort into sweet, sugary grins. Giggling and squealing, they all raised their limp-wristed hands aloft in unison and waved goodbye. "Have fun, Ne~chan! Enjoy the festival! We'll see you again later, okay~?"

Our heroes were running like crazy madmen, and they were practically across the city by now; but still, over the winds and the drone of feet on the sidewalk, Neku's voice could plainly be heard: "LIKE HELL YOU WILL!"

With a collective sigh of trite raggedness, the sextuplets shook their heads in a fond display. It was around this time that Josh #1 showed up, plodding down the street in a manner most dismal. It was as if he had no drive, no will to keep fighting anymore. One wonders how a single punch to the face can knock the will to keep fighting right out of someone's head, but a punch can be a powerful thing.

The Joshes saw Josh #1's hesitant approach all at about the same time. Their sugary grins melted off their skulls like globs of gluey ice cream, and they looked at him with grim distaste.

"Well," said #2 after a moment of stilled silence. His nose crinkled delicately in disdain. "Among us, I suppose we know who the fungus is."

Josh #1 grit his teeth.

"We detained the Neku for you, like you asked us," #4 grumbled stiffly. "You said you had a_ plan._"

"You know, I seem to recall the plan stating a very different outcome," #2 supplied, looking _genuinely _perplexed. "You know – correct me if I'm wrong – the plan said that you would get the Josh alone, talk to him, and he'd be wrapped around your pretty little finger in no time. The plan said that you'd reason it out with them, didn't it? You'd get him to come to us willingly, and then he'd explain to his Neku, and they'd walk right into our clutches just like that!" He snapped his fingers here, to illustrate.

"And where, I wonder, is this Joshua unit?" #5 stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Oh, that's right – I remember! Running off into the sunset, arm in arm with his Neku!"

"You're an idiot!" jeered #4.

"A miserable waste of the gene code!"

Josh #1 gingerly touched the bluish-purple mark blooming over his lip. He stared at the ground miserably, his violet eyes practically hidden under mussed-up curls.

"And on top of that, you got yourself absolutely filthy. Will you just_ look_ at that bruise on your face, ugh!"

"Hideous! Reprehensible!"

"I'm sorry," Josh #1 murmured quietly. His fingers were still trembling.

#3 threw his head back and sniffed haughtily. "I, for one, will not be seen with such a disgusting-looking creature."

"Go away, defective thing. Bother us not until we finish with our clergy duties."

#4 waved the boy off. "Go on! Shoo! We will help you no more, scummy vermin."

Josh #1 looked at the clones with wide eyes for a moment, then bowed his head again. Truth be told, he hadn't exactly _expected_ these guys would have helped him any farther than this point, but...

He kept his gaze turned to the pavement and shuffled off, obedient, in the direction that our heroes had fled.

* * *

Speaking of which...

Our heroes, as you know, are not Olympic medalists. It was only a matter of time before the adrenaline rush crapped out and they crashed.

As the Joshes vanished from view, Joshua began to feel convinced that his legs were sculpted out of that vanilla-flavored pudding stuff; meanwhile, Neku's feelings were more in the spectrum of "his nerves were about to catch fire and fry him from the inside out." Even so, the two managed to make it all the way to Shibukyu Superstore. "GAAAAHHH!" they cried in unison, unanimously deciding to go out in a blaze of glory. They linked arms and ran like banshees might run, if banshees put all that pent-up energy into sprinting instead of yelling at everybody.

They crashed through the window of Sunshine Burger and promptly collapsed on the floor, asphyxiating.

"B-by the gods, if I lose another calorie I think I'll evaporate," Neku gasped, but only after his teeth had stopped chattering.

"Puddipuddipuddi..." Joshua babbled, legs trembling uselessly.

They ceased all communications and diverted most of their energy into slowing down their mach-five heart rates, rendering them useless for anything more than haggard huffing. This would continue for a while.

Since they won't entertain us for the moment, let us turn our attention to the peculiar location at which they had arrived.

Now, in Japan, you'd expect everything to be clean and computerized, not to mention kawaii desu. This held true for the Sunshine fast-food restaurant empire – it was so cute, it was borderline odd. Eating at Sunshine Burger was comparable to dining at the Mickey D's of the Squiddles world. A huge smiley sun, named Sunshine-san, serves as the mascot; a huge silkscreen of his buttery visage adorns the back of every Sunshine Burger setup, his shiny desudesu eyes staring at you weirdly from over an adorably small mouth. He watches you, always.

In our heroes' Shibuya, which is more or less normal, this is how it always is. You go, you eat, you throw your crap away, you leave, all under the watchful eyes of Sunshine-san. The place is just as clean as you'd expect it to be; wiped countertops, a blue and yellow color scheme to match the colors of a sunny afternoon, smiley girls with pigtails and sunny dispositions manning the registry, kawaii desu soft serve machines in the back, next to the kawaii deep fryer, the kawaii burger flipper, the two kawaii sugoi refrigerators, the kawaii trash can desu, and the absolutely ugly drive thru window. Everything has that goddamn sun slapped on, and it stares impudently from every direction at once in a manner most disconcerting. But overall, it's an okay place; I mean, it's not gourmet food or anything, and their "Tatsumi" burgers pack a deadly cholesterol-clogged punch to the thighs, but it's okay. It's clean. It's nice.

Not this Sunshine Burger.

In this warped, distorted version of the Shibuya we know and love, Sunshine Shibukyu was...how can I put this...uh...

It was rather...dingy.

All right, that's enough description for the moment. I'm pretty sure our Josh and Neku have recovered use of their lungs by now. Have you?

"Yup," said Neku.

"Nehhh..." wheezed the fatty fatty dumpling.

They had graduated from laying prostrate and now were simply sitting on the slatternly floor tiles of the fast-food restaurant, utterly spent. Their breath came hard and fast and they looked like they had just finished a marathon, or... something else.

"Not funny," said Joshua, who seemed to have remembered which hole the air goes in. Excellent. "You are not funny."

There was a moment of silence as they took in their surroundings.

The walls were crusty and dank-looking, with yellowed paint that was peeling off in places. The giant four-feet-in-diameter sun decal staring demurely from the back wall seemed mostly intact, if a bit rubbed-out in places; but there were these bizzare, rust-colored stains dribbling down the wall, like some kind of pipe was leaking and nobody cared to fix the ugly mess. You could see mold rippling the plaster in the back corners, frothy white with black smears; you could see there were entire colonies of cockroaches, seething in the shadows. There were questionable stains all over the gritty floor; rusty stains, pallid stains, barely-there stains. It looked like some kind of conduit or irrigation hose was busted in the soda fountain because there were thick, sticky smears all over it, spilling over the lip of the machine and puddling on the ground in molasses-like membranes. There were about two flies on every surface at any given time. The monitors over the service counter had either been smashed, completely gutted or - worst yet - permanently stuck on the Oprah channel. It was Sunshine Burger a la Jhonen Vasquez.

"Holy Moses," Joshua muttered sharply under his breath, looking moderately sullen. "Surely not _this _ungodly grease pit? Why couldn't we have crashed through the window of Dragon Couture? Or better yet, Olive Garden? Why here? Why now? I bet you'd need a backhoe to excavate the floor from under all this...this general repugnance! Such lackadaisical hygiene...it's downright vile! I bet the health code people will have a stroke when they see this! Right, Neku?"

"...Whoo! Burgers!"

_Clearly, his head is shoved so deeply in his ass, his brain must have entered his stomach_, Joshua thought dismally, watching his partner do a celebratory dance. _This Sunshine Shibukyu is so obnoxiously filthy it makes my sewer look like Singapore. That is not exactly an ignorable fact._

Be that as it may, Neku had no intention of acknowledging the squalor of the Sunshine Burger. He was off in Burgerland. "Burgers! _Burgers!_ Yes, ma'am! Oh, yeah, gimme some burgers! Gonna stuff my face with some burgers, hell yeaaah! This day just got approximately three hundred per-cent more awesome, baby!" He stomped around, waving his hands in the air and dancing. His skirts swished rather noisily around his thighs.

Joshua hauled himself off the floor and kind of settled into a standing position. A fly buzzed by his ear and he flinched away.

"Ah, Neku..."

"Ahh_hhh_, Joshua..." said Neku in a voice not unlike Ace Ventura, Pet Detective's. "What you want, boy?"

Joshua was rather rattled. "Don't you take that tone of voice with me, Neku. I'd just like to point out that we probably won't be eating here."

"Uh, what?" The dance ground to a halt and left Neku standing still, staring at his partner with a most peculiar expression on his face.

Joshua nodded curtly. "Just look at this filth! Just look at the grime! Clearly, this place hasn't been cleaned in ages." He scrubbed at the greasy, gritty floor with the toe of his nice shoe, noting with disgust that it was caked on pretty hard.

"...So?"

"_So_, Neku, it would be in our best interests to get out of here and go find sustenance in some other, more hygienic location." _Such as a dumpster._

"Pfft, no way."

Joshua's head snapped up, eyes narrowing already. "Excuse me?"

"I said, no way." Neku crossed his arms in defiance. "So what if it's a little dirty?"

"Neku, if this place is 'dirty,' my sewer is 'spotlessly clean.'"

"SO WHAT?" Neku shouted suddenly, surprising Josh with the sheer volume of it. The boy glanced at the nearly-completely busted digital menu, clenching his fists. "_I want a freaking burger!_" His mouth twisted and untwisted, as if it couldn't decide – should it be a maniacal grin, or a dangerously deadly scowl?

Neku whirled around and jabbed the Composer in the chest – his eyes were wild, scalding as steam, with madness whirling in their cobalt depths. "_You are buying me a freaking burger!_"

"Can't we get a burger somewhere els-"

"NO! Absolutely NOT!" The Proxy was hungry, humiliated, and overall just plain tired of this bullshit. He just wanted some burgers, was that too much to ask? Neku ran his hands down his sides, and as he did so, the rage on his face turned into despair. His voice cracked. "...Look at me! Just look at me! Look at what those bastards did!"

Joshua took in the black-and-white Lolita ensemble – REALLY took it in, as if seeing it for the first time - and bit back a snicker. "Oh, you poor thing."

The scowl came back with full force, but by now Neku's voice was back to its normal deadpan. "Come on, dude. Don't you think it's time I got a break? I mean, seriously..." He smoothed out his skirts, plucking at the lace and the ribbon with dismal fingers.

Joshua's expression went carefully blank. The ruffly, frilly dress clearly did not fit Neku correctly. The Proxy's legs were unshaven and stuck out from the lacy skirts in a painfully awkward fashion. He kept fidgeting uselessly, messing with the giant bow in the back and muttering crossly to himself...it was a stark contrast from the coolkid that Neku strove to be.

Now, Joshua didn't really want to laugh at Neku, but – wait. Okay, that's a lie. Joshua wanted to crack up and say something dumb about baby pandas. But to his credit, he did not. Joshua remained stony-faced and stoic. "All I'm saying is, this place is kind of horrible. I'm pretty sure we can get a burger somewhere else – somewhere where we won't be pulling cockroach feelers out of our conksuck burger patties, for example."

"Dammit! Throw me a bone for once in my life, Cream Puff!" Neku grabbed Josh by the collar and shook him a little. "I want a burger _here,_ I want a burger_ now,_ and you are gonna buy it for me!"

"Okay, okay, okay, fine..." Joshua shoved the temporary transvestite away and made a big show of brushing the cooties off. "We can_ have_ greasy cockroach burgers, if it's that important to you. I'm dead, what do I care."

"Sweet."

So, they moseyed on up to the counter, Neku goading Joshua along by poking him in the neck. There wasn't exactly a line of bitches clamoring to get serviced by the Burger King, so it was a bit of a mystery why they were left waiting for five minutes.

"Is nobody here?" Joshua wondered, almost hopefully.

"If nobody's here, we'll just have to make the burgers ourselves," Neku growled.

"It's not like we haven't made a big enough scene already," Joshua said, as unnecessarily as usual. "If anyone's here, they would be..._aware_ of our presence by now."

They wasted another handful of seconds just standing around, waiting for events to happen. Joshua was still too used to people acknowledging his presence; Neku was just too lazy to raise his voice. Eventually that mantle of responsibility fell upon his waify partner's skinny shoulders.

"Hello? Uh, Sunshine Burger people?" Joshua rapped on the counter with his knuckles, as gingerly as he could. "We would like to place an order...?"

Silence.

Then, with a powerful WHUMP, the lights in the kitchen went out.

"Oh well nobody's here I guess we have to go get ramen again hee hee," said Joshua.

"Wait a minute," said Neku.

There came, from the now-darkened kitchen, a series of cautious shuffling sounds. Then, with a PMUHW, the lights came back on.

"Excellent. Tonight, we dine on ass burgers birthed from the spectral crap canals of the undead," Joshua said cheerily. Perhaps a bit too cheerily.

Neku gave him a skeptical look. "Aren't _you _a zombie?"

Joshua played with his hair a little and looked completely not scared.

Neku rolled his eyes a little.

The kitchen was now the point of interest. Something was in there. Even though the lights were on, about half of the fixtures were busted beyond repair, so the kitchen itself was lit very sparingly and shadows dominated the room. There was a shadowy disturbance, and slowly, the door of one of the refrigerators swung open with a hoarse, rusty creak.

Something came out. It was humanoid.

"Aaah, the suspense," said Neku and Joshua – they were standing right there, so they already knew what was coming. They could see it, right there. It was right in front of them.

"Get on with it," said Neku and Joshua – they were now making references to Monty Python, which just goes to show how much of a threat this advancing thing was.

Joshua made a none-too-subtle motion towards the gun-shaped bulge in his hip pocket, and so the author got on with it.

It was a girl, clearly a girl. Neku easily recognized her as one of the cashiers at the Sunshine Burger back home – a girl with light, honey-brown hair and eyes the color of dog poop. There were two Sunshine Burgers that Neku frequented and the cashiers all looked the same, so it was no wonder that Neku couldn't remember her name. You'd think he would have, since she was clearly in love with his gorgeously manly man-self. Either way, the Sunshine Burger cashier girls always had their hair done up in cute pigtails, and they smiled cheerily at you with their left hand held up in an inviting sort of gesture.

This girl looked a lot different than the girl Neku remembered. Stressed, for one thing. Very stressed. Her hair was not in pigtails, strangely – most of it had been snipped off crudely. Someone had obviously grabbed the nearest sharp object and gone to town without bothering to look for a shiny surface. The girl was still obviously feminine, given that she was wearing the pink blouse and skirt supersize combo uniform, complete with a blue ribbon tied below her neck and a sky-blue visor perched on her crown. It looked like it had seen better days; the sleeves and skirt were all torn up and spotted with strange stains, and the visor was kind of ripped in half. But these were all background details – her face was what was really different. Her mouth was twisted into an absurd grin that showed more gums than teeth; her eyes were wide and nervous, and her pupils flicked back and forth like crazy rats trapped in cages. But you heard all this when I described Princess K, so this is all one hundred per-cent old hat to you by now. You jaded bastard.

"Ahem," said Neku and Joshua.

Right.

So the burger girl came out of the fridge and prowled up to the counter, where she stood, bouncing nervously on her heels and glancing back and forth. Her smile looked very, very forced, as if it contained more than a few gallons of pure liquid malice. Or would that be malwater? The point is, she looked like she were trying hard to conceal some rather not-so-wholesome intentions. Where Princess K had looked fearful and crazy, the burger girl looked more like she expected to be attacked by some kind of aggressor and wanted to get the jump on him.

"C-can I help you, sirs?" she stuttered, bouncing up and down.

Neku stepped right up to the plate. "Darn skippy you can! I want a double burger with fries and a side of Sunshine Nuggets!" he said, cracking a goofy grin.

"Ah, just a salad for -"

"HIM TOO!" Neku bellowed, grabbing Joshua round the shoulder in a rough sort of hug.

Joshua looked slightly mortified. "_What are you saying, you fool?_"

"Aaaaand two large cups, for the soda fountain! Yep! That's our order!"

"Okay," said the burger girl. She stared at them for a minute, eyebrows furrowed suspiciously and eyelid twitching spasmodically.

"...What?" asked Neku after a minute of this silliness.

She continued to stare. Perhaps it was Neku's foofy dress, or perhaps it was the fact that Joshua was allowing himself to be shoulder-hugged.

"Hey Bur-girl, what's your deal?" Neku growled. "We're just two guys getting two burgers together."

"Is that a problem?" Joshua wondered.

They both widened their eyes as wide as possible and stared holes into the Burger Girl's soul as obnoxiously as they could.

"...No problem at all," she chimed with false cheeriness, and she ran to start up the fryer.

"Okay then," said Neku.

Joshua shook his head. "She should seriously stop trying to start fights."

"I know, right?"

* * *

A short time later, Neku and Joshua had their Combo Meals in-hand and were sitting in the least greasy of the booths. Joshua was eying his burger with distaste, as if he were a master jeweler and that idiot of a burger was trying to tell him that its rhinestone costume ring was actually chiseled out of pure diamond and was worth a million dollars.

"I really don't think we should be eating anything from this place," Joshua said finally.

"Mhrrghrr?" Neku said. He was halfway through with his burger.

Joshua sighed. Since he was dead, food poisoning couldn't hurt him – hell, poison poisoning couldn't hurt him. But the fact that he had that head cold was making him more than a little wary of these kinds of things. Neku didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with his, so Joshua eventually just sighed and hopped on the bandwagon.

Which is to say, he took a bite. The delightful, juicy sensation spread across his tongue – at least, until he realized how dry and awful it tasted.

Neku cocked an eyebrow and got that knowing look on his face – the look your parents get when they tell you to try something. Specifically, the one that appears the instant after you put that particular something in your mouth. "How do ya like that, eh? It's good!"

"_I feel like vomiting_," Joshua grumbled, chewing savagely.

"And yet you continue to eat!" Neku crowed, lowering the waning crescent of his sandwich to better showcase his smarmy face.

"I require sustenance," Joshua explained, taking another bite of what he was now irrevocably convinced was rubbery tree bark. "Bleh."

Neku chuckled obnoxiously and downed the rest of his burger in a matter of chomps. He watched Joshua chewing sullenly for a moment and then tutted. "You're not eating it right, dude."

Joshua took another bite. "Bleh."

"When it's overcooked like this, you gotta slam it down before your taste buds can recognize that it's all burnt up," Neku explained. "Here, I'll tell you how it's done. Step one, you take a great big bite-"

"Step two – go kill yourself." Joshua's sullen-ness dropped to such a point that his name ought to have been Edward. "...Bleh."

"No, idiot. You have to shove it down your thirsty, lustful esophagus as hard and fast as you can, making sure to squish the ever-loving heck out of every salivary gland in your path, because spit is an acid and it will chew the food for you as it goes down your undulating hatch..."

"Ew," said Joshua, his already begrudging mastication grinding to a halt.

"...as the soft white hands of your villi will caress the chyme as it oozes through the glistening, quivering entrance to your crap factory..."

"Stop," said Joshua.

"...and the spongy walls of the colon will kiss the moisture out of the remains of the vomitous soup, completing the beautiful metamorphosis from puke to poo and leaving a nice, big, soft turd, ready to join its fishy friends in the ocean – just like Nemo." Neku paused to wipe a glimmering tear from his eye, overcome. "And that, my friend, is how you eat a burger."

Joshua looked vaguely ill. "Were the disturbingly erotic details a requirement, or are you just trying to make me nauseous for kicks?"

"A little from column A, a little from column B." Neku smirked and shoved the rest of the dubious-looking sandwich down his throat.

"...Okay." Joshua scrunched up his face and went back to having a staring contest with his food.

After a while, he tried to finish his ass burger's syndrome, but he could only get in another three bites before he gave up the ghost. He stuck out the pink tip of his tongue and turned away from Neku in a highly cinematic fashion, fakey tears pricking the corners of his eyes. "Bleh. Every bite is like pain and terrible had a urination contest on my palate. I can stand it no longer, Nekkun! Take this filth away!"

"Sweet. More for me." Neku grabbed the burger and practically inhaled it.

Joshua now turned his attention towards the rest of his food. "Oh, brilliant. MORE ass nuggets," he grumbled, nibbling at a chicken chunk.

* * *

They spent a while like this, deeply engaged in furious mastication. The burger girl, Shigemi Konno, ticked her fingernails on the countertop, watching our protagonists gnaw away at their rations like a couple of hamsters. She tried not to think about her pet hamster and its unfortunate end at the hands of one of the Josh clones, or the boy she used to like, before his face was everywhere...she furrowed her brow and continued to bounce up and down, waiting for the two clones to leave. They seemed benign enough, but she had seen enough carnage to know these bastards thought of nothing but slaughter. Look at them, and their playful banter...it was nothing but a paper-thin disguise, barely concealing their hidden agendas. They were bickering somewhat playfully, but inside they were thinking of nothing but how quickest to kill the other.

It made her sick, watching these games all day. It would almost be better if they were at least open about their mutual bloodlust. She narrowed her eyes and scratched absently at her leg, at the chunk of missing flesh that was concealed by her skirt.

They seemed to be fresh units, at least. The fresh ones didn't usually attack outright, as they had never tasted flesh before, they had never killed before. They didn't yet know how good it felt, to smash in the faces of those demon-people that ripped apart your coworkers and your boss and maimed your sister. In a way, they were innocent, like children. They wouldn't think of her as food, yet. They thought only of the Nekus and the Joshes and how to 'have' their first. They didn't think of the passersby.

In any event, she had to be wary. They could jump up at any time, smile at her, and attack. They could cleave her hand away with one bite, they could rip her face off, like they did to poor Sayuki. Her eyelid twitched. Her general person twitched. She bounced on her heels, as antsy as a picnicker covered in sugar water.

Subsisting on nothing but french fries and cola will do that to you.

Getting back to the actual tactical vernacular smackticle going on across the restaurant, Neku and Joshua were currently bickering like bear cubs about inane things. After two particularly scathing rounds of this repartee, they settled into a silent lull, chewing rather solemnly.

Joshua was the one facing the window, so he was the first to notice. "Neku...ah, I don't believe this..."

"What?"

The Composer straightened up a little and squinted outside. As if his fears were confirmed, he hissed and ducked down again, voice dropping to a careful whisper. "...Crimony. He's here."

"Who?"

"That foofy harem clone of yours, the one I spent a quarter of an hour rolling around in the dirt with..."

"...When?"

"Just a little while ago."

"Where...?"

"Outside of Lapin Angelique."

Neku screwed up his face in disgust. "Why?"

Joshua scowled. "Whatever you're thinking, it wasn't like_ that_, you idiot. Please give me a little credit, honestly..."

"...Okay, _how?_"

"He was trying to incapacitate me, I'm sure of it. Isolate the uncooperative factor and take him down. Naturally, our ideologies clashed, and we fought."

Neku sighed. "All right. Which number is he?"

"Number?"

"There's Josh #1, Josh #2, Josh #3..." Here Neku noticed the look on Joshua's face. "...What?"

"You've named them?" Joshua sounded almost pained. "You've_ named _your foofy clone harem?"

"I didn't name them, I _numbered_ them. It makes it easier to keep track," Neku said defensively. "...They _aren't_ a harem!"

"Keep it down! He'll hear you!"

By this time, the burger girl had noticed the poor fellow standing outside the window. She had fled for the safety of the broken refrigerator.

Now, Josh #1 had his face pressed to the glass, and it was with sad eyes that he watched our protagonists fidget around. There was kind of a giant, jagged hole in the window where our heroes had smashed through like a couple of semi-trucks, so he could hear every word spake by the two twitching idiots as if it were the clarion call of the angelic legion. He was kind of waiting for the right moment to go in, because after all, it was impolite to barge in on a conversation. Also, just hearing the protagonists bitch at each other was enough to make poor Other Josh sick with nostalgia.

"Look at them," he sighed, dismal. "Bickering like a couple of bear cubs...like brothers..." He squeezed his eyes shut and moaned lightly. "Ohh...I'm sorry..."

"What is he doing," our Joshua whispered.

"I don't know," Neku whispered back.

The two of them watched him like a couple of nervous teenage girls might watch one of those weepy, pretentious artist types. And by that, I mean they stared at that poor boy as if they had hawks for eyes. Meanwhile, Other Josh sighed again and kind of awkwardly ducked through the jagged hole in the window. Our protagonists froze up.

"He's coming this way!"

"EEK! He's looking at you!"

"Oh God – what – hide me, _hide me!_"

"Um, hi," said The Other Joshua shyly, shuffling up to their table. He absently messed with his poptab necklace. "You're the two units from room...room number 27, right?"

Our Josh was kind of trying to hide under his meal baggie, so Neku answered for him.

"Sure we are." The proxy proceeded to narrow his eyes and fiddle rather pointedly with the frilly ribbon around his neck.

"What is your desire, you ridiculous dimwit?" Joshua grumbled. Apparently he was tired of maintaining his image.

OJ looked pained. "Can I...talk to you?"

"No," was the reply.

Ooh. Harsh.

"...Please?" OJ's face got all twisted up in an alien expression. It almost looked...pleading, which is an adjective no Joshua would ever let himself be described with unless his very life depended on it.

Remember, if you will, that Joshua is dead.

Neku and Josh looked at him as if to say, "No way in hell, brotha."

OJ hesitated visibly for a second – his muscles froze up, his mouth opened slightly, as if he were about to say something and suddenly clamped down on the idea. "I...I know what you are," he said finally.

"Jig's up, Neku. He knows we're vampires."

"No!" OJ clenched his fists. His voice dropped to a barely-audible hiss of breath, spilling over his teeth in a slightly gravelly rush before he could jam shut the floodgates of his teeth. "You're from another world."

"...Did I say vampires? I _meant_ aliens."

Neku bopped his partner on the head. "Hey! Captain Earwax! Listen to him, will you?" Joshua rubbed his crown sulkily as Neku turned to properly address the newcomer to their table. You may want to note that his demeanor was altered significantly. "I'm sorry, I don't believe that numbnuts heard you correctly. Could you repeat that?"

"You're from another universe, right?" OJ's drawn-up shoulders loosened slightly. "A parallel world? That sort of thing?"

"Sit down," said Neku, sliding over and patting the booth next to him. After some thought, he reached over and grabbed our Joshua's (untouched) cola. "Have a drink."

Joshua made a face of mute protest.

"No thank you, I don't like soda." The latest addition to the party smiled slightly and shook his head as he took a seat. "But, um, I appreciate the sentiment."

Joshua mumbled something nasty.

Neku decided to nip this thing in the bud. "Hey, you. Quit being jealous. I love you all the same."

"How can you 'love' him the same as me?" Joshua growled, exposing the inherent flaw in that statement's logic. "You've only known him for two days!"

"And already he's given me a foot massage and several cheesecakes." Neku quirked an eyebrow. "What have _you_ done for me? Mind rape and assault?"

"...Hmph."

"Okay then. The point is, we need to get out of here. Any allies possible are more than welcome." Neku grinned. "And besides, we're going home today, aren't we? If we find any fellow out-of-dimensioners around, we should take them back with us. It's only the right thing to do."

"But I- Shibuya only needs one Joshua," Joshua said.

"Which is why we'll pawn him off on Mr. H," Neku explained. "Because if he can pick some up, he can drop some off, can't he?" Neku looked at OJ. "So...does that sound good to you?"

OJ looked stunned. "Y-y-yes," he said, smiling shyly. "That sounds great...hee hee...heeheehee..."

"See?" said Neku. "Helping people is_ fun_, kids!"

Joshua's eyes turned the color of grape jelly. He was so jelly.

"This fanfic's already on its way to a happy ending!" Neku practically sang. "Why, I predict that in the next chapter, Mr. H will appear after he gets that message you sent and he'll take us all home, heh."

"R-really?" OJ said, slightly confused. "...What fanfic?"

HA HA HA! Everyone had a good laugh!

Yes, things were really looking up for our heroes! They had themselves a new friend and a somewhat-satisfying resolution was in sight! Neku was sure right – in the next chapter, this whole adventure would probably be over for good!

Unless, you know, something happened. But the likelihood of that would be...unlikely! HA HA HA! Geddit? GEDDIT?

Around this point, Joshua was struck with a deep feeling of dread. And by deep, I mean it felt like a bottomless pit had just been rent open in the base of his stomach, a abyssal cavern of ice-cold sea water with eldritch monstrosities and horrorterrors playing rousing games of Scrabble in the deepest depths.

He had forgotten to send the message.

* * *

**A/N: **Ooooh. Ouch. Joshua, you done screwed up.

I am entirely sick of pudding. I mean it. :U

Okay, so obviously getting braces has instilled some deep-set, teeth-related angst in my system, because I had a dream that I grew some kind of Predator mouth in my throat. :I It was kind of like one of those mouths in Spore - you know, the Dietrap mouths with the four sections and the ridges of teeth? Yeah. I had that mouth INSIDE my mouth, like matryoshka mouths. The teeth were super long and brittle, so I bit down and they snapped in half and I spat out like fifty baby teeth into my hand and I looked at my mom and said "I wish you wouldn't watch me when I do this." It was the weirdest dream I've had yet, because I kept flexing my teeth in the mirror and gagging and thinking "OH GREAT how on earth am I going to eat anything like this."

But people hate hearing about dreams. So I guess I'll complain about something else.

Like PUDDING.

And CLARITIN.

And PILLS THAT SMELL LIKE VITAMINS AND YOU CAN TASTE THE VITAMINS EVERY TIME YOU HICCUP.

I have a sore throat. I probably need to stop gargling nails.

I need to scan a bunch of pictures but I don't think I can.

-_- Man, I angst about stupid stuff. I guess there isn't enough PAIN and RAEG in my li-OHSHITWAITTHEREIS!

REBECCA BLACK.

FRIDAY.

THIS MAKES ME WRITHE IN MY OILY TIN. WHAT, DO THEY HAND OUT THE SINGING CONTRACTS AS PARTY FAVORS OR SOMETHING? WHERE IS THIS HAPPENING? I WANT IN ON THIS SHIT, MAN! D:

my cat keeps jumping up and scratching me like he's sambo the fantastic flying asshole. cut it out you dumb animal. seriously. :V


	16. In which Heroes Go Home

_**JOSHUA TRIPS**_

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: IN WHICH NEKU AND JOSHUA LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER

The Story So Far: Finally, the end is in sight. All the pieces are in place and Neku, Joshua, and Other Joshua are raring to go home. It seems like everything will end happily ever after for our heroes and they can put this entirely too-awkward escapade behind them for good. But what do you know, Josh-Josh set up that UGharmony account and everything, but he forgot to send Mr. H a message notifying him of its existence. Gee, this throws a petite wrench in the plan. Or does it?

Rating: (You're) Still T(he one that makes me laugh)

Of note in this chapter: Neku rips his stocking-sock things, Joshua FINALLY gets some brains, and OJ is kidnapped - but only for a little while.

Genre: Parody/Adventure

* * *

The Joshes were still milling about by Lapin Angelique, having a can-kicking contest of sorts, when Josh #6 came staggering up to them.

He was a sight. Chunks of his shirt were missing in places, strips of denim had been ripped from his filthy, crusted jeans. The fabric was blackened around these odd-looking rips and tears, almost as if it had been singed. He was walking with a limp in his gait; apparently, he could barely bend his left knee. His eyes were shut almost painfully tight. The corners of his mouth were shiny and red with darker flecks, and his hands were in much the same condition. As he got closer, it became obvious: he had been terribly burned.

The Joshes smiled at this and rushed to his side, surrounding him with a ring of cooing phrases. Josh #6 shooed them away.

"Neku," he rasped, barely audible. "_Neku._" When he spoke, you could see that his mouth had been burned worse than any other part of him – his tongue was very red and oddly small, veins and arteries plainly visible through a cracked, paper-thin shell. The walls of his mouth were red with black and gray speckles everywhere, the tissue warped and flaking. His teeth were browned, hole-filled nubs, half-dissolved – kind of like the aftermath of those science experiments where you drop a tooth in a bottle of soda and forget about it for a week. Spots of tissue had been burned away in the back of his throat - puffy white rings of charred flesh, they were, wounds through which odd colors could be seen. His lips were practically gone. Trails of dried blood crusted his chin in black, flaky trails.

He lifted an arm stiffly, placed a burned, blotchy hand on Josh #5's shoulder. "Neku!"

5 understood, and quickly ran off to give Sauceshua some business. The other Joshes continued to coo gently and soothingly, carefully guiding their mangled leader over to the steps of Lapin Angelique. They ran fingers through his clumped and matted hair, even though chunks of it were missing. They kissed the backs of his burned hands, they kneaded his warped and shaking shoulders with their knuckles. #4 dug some aromatherapy bottles out of his pocket, and soon the smell that permeated 6's body - a stench of burning flesh and tree sap - was chased away by the powerful fumes of rosemary and lavender essence.

After a minute, 5 came back with an armload of at least ten cracked, filthy mugs, each of which was filled to the brim with chunky sauce.

He carefully arranged the cups on the step, and then passed one to #4. #4 raised the dingy mug to #6's ruined lips and let him drink. The vile-looking brew mostly spilled onto #6's lap, only to be carefully wiped up by the hem of #3's shirt. The maimed clone whimpered like an infant and suckled away with the clumsy, scabbed-up remains of his lips, barely able to move them. His packmates guided his movements with cold, gentle hands, letting their esteemed leader suck the gory sauce off their fingers, catching the globs that fell from his face and offering them to the blind, greedy suggestion of a mouth. They cooed and whispered soft things and held him, stroked him, as he licked and mumbled and choked and cried softly like a blind and limbless newborn. After one cup had finally been drained through all their efforts combined, #6 stopped trembling.

After two cups, he was able to hold the mugs.

After three cups, he was operating on his own. Greedily gulping down the meaty stew as if it were some kind of opium, occasionally choking on a larger chunk he had neglected to chew.

After five cups, he spat out his ruined teeth. All of them. Brown and pock-marketed, they looked more like pebbles than anything. He resumed gulping down the sauce as if nothing had happened.

After seven cups, his hands were smooth and ivory-skinned. Nary a blotch in sight. His mouth probably looked the same, but it was too covered in bloody broth to tell.

After ten cups, he opened his eyes.

His irises looked troubled and stormy, like dark thoughts were curling around the clone's pupils in rings of hazy purple smoke. But that was a silly thought, since he didn't feel the full spectra of emotion - how could he have a tempestuous cauldron of bubbling, conflicting emotions nestled in his guts if he only felt one thing at a time? He was probably just confused. 3 tenderly wiped the sludge from his leader's lips. They were soft and pink and full again.

His pack waited for him to speak.

Joshua #6 just looked at them – not at them, _through_ them – for the longest time, and then he spoke. "There's been a change of plans."

"What sort of change?" #4 inquired, crinkling his nose ever-so-cutely.

"Well...after the cleansing ritual, the drinking from the graypool, I was allowed to speak with Her. As per the routine, but you knew that. She put Her hands to my face and I went to that strange location, and I spoke to Her. She wanted a report, of course."

The other clones nodded slowly, in tandem.

"...Lady Pamela was not pleased...with..." 6 scowled. "I mentioned the defective scum, of course. She got...angry, when I described their behavioral patterns, as observed by the freshie. Who is also defective." The clone's eyebrows slowly knit together. "I don't understand it...She wanted to know more about the defectives than the Tithing preparations. She asked me if I loved Her."

He paused here to take a sip from the next cup of Neku sauce. The other clones waited, somewhat patiently, for him to continue.

"Naturally, I said yes. She asked me to do something to Her...I couldn't. I couldn't touch Her." He made a strange, perplexed face. "I'm not allowed. She knows that. I think...that was a test, of some kind. I don't know. She looked strange when I refused – angry, and then...something else. Like I had failed."

"...What sort of change?" #4 inquired, more slowly this time.

Joshua #6 stared at the ground in utter bewilderment. "...It's not a logical change by any stretch. In fact, it's downright inconvenient. But it is what She wants." He looked up at his pack, face settling into its default smirk for some reason. "The Tithing shall be tonight."

"_Whaa-aat?_" chorused the Joshes, looking vaguely horrified. How awful. They'd have to tell everyone, change all their records...#5 looked dismally at his clipboard and sighed a dull, tinny sigh.

"Does this affect the terms of the agreement with that..." Josh #3 made a face. "..._defective_ one of, _ahem_, ours?"

"Absolutely," said #6, without hesitation. "You should probably go get him. I don't think the poor dear would enjoy being left out, do you?"

5/6ths of the Joshes snickered evilly, picturing their plans for him. "Poor dear indeed!"

"...Is it going to be at the usual time?" #5 asked in a dismal way. He didn't see too much humor in the situation, honestly.

"As soon as possible, She said."

"What about the...booths...?"

#6 arched an ashen eyebrow. "You are the recorder, are you not? _You_ figure it out." He brushed #4 off his lap and stood, stretching. "Come, now. I have plenty of tedium to put _myself_ through, without having to think for each one of us."

#5 grumbled and flicked a glob of sauce off his clipboard.

"Now. We only have an hour or so to get everything ready before She gives the signal."

"An hour," #5 repeated blankly. "_An hour_."

#6 ignored him. "Keeping this time frame in mind, we'll have to split up and finish our tasks that way. A222-2012 and A322-0000, you are in charge of collecting the tithes. B404-0470, prepare the Heart and the ceremonial garb. C550-5098, do paperwork."

#5 muttered nasty things.

"As for me, I will pay a visit to our defective _friends_," #6 said, almost gleefully.

The rest of his pack nodded and scattered in all directions, like seeds of choking mistletoe thrown to the churning wind. #2 and #3 slithered off into the shadows, taking a shortcut to 104; #4 headed back into Lapin Angelique with a prim step, putting on his coy face; #5 shuffled off towards Dogenzaka, sulking; and with that, #6 was alone again.

#6 continued to speak, but it was clear he was only talking to himself. Ha ha, stupid clone, only WEIRDOS do that – isn't that right, Kipper?

Yes, yes it is.

"Won't they just be _delighted_ to see me? Your hurt little lambs will be hurrying back into your loving arms soon enough, my lady. Soon enough." He sighed peacefully. "They'll be cooing and crying your name, repenting their sins as they rot in the graywater, writhing and wailing and calling your name as your roots run red with their blood, tee hee...they will learn to love you, yes they will. Our sweet little Neku-Nekky and those other two, can you just imagine? Ever-so-defiant in waking, they are, but... When the flesh of their faces slowly warps and peels, they will know your love. As your holy nectar eats their flesh away, they will know your love. As their teeth blister and flake apart, as their hair turns to ashes and their skin to dust, as their eyes crisp and bubble and smoke and boil into milky foam, they will know your _love_. They will know their sin, and they will know forgiveness...and they will come home. Oh, Pamela. Oh, my Pamela..."

He giggled sweetly.

And then, with a mind full of cloudy, dark thoughts, and with eyes full of the golden-glass sky, the clone strolled off to Shibukyu Superstore, whistling "Ring Around the Rosie" in a rather off-key fashion.

* * *

Neku, Joshua, and OJ left the now-empty Sunshine Burger the way normal people do – which is to say, they all linked arms and smashed through the door together. (What do you mean that's not normal? You need to start_ living_, man!) I'm sure I don't need to point out that Neku was the one in the middle, with our Joshua gingerly hooked on one arm and OJ clinging tightly to the other, poptab necklace clinking noisily. OJ looked, for all the world, like a blushing bride off on her honeymoon, so perfectly pleased he was practically pink. Yes, even next to the boy in the frilly Lolita dress, OJ looked like the bitch in the relationship.(Neku was still in the dress. That never stopped being a thing that happened.)

Joshua's distasteful look etched itself ever deeper into his face-meat and made itself comfortable. It wasn't going anywhere.

The door to the Sunshine Burger did not lead outside, oddly enough. It led to the darkened inside of Shibukyu Superstore, which looked like it had been the sight of a few battles. Joshua detached from Neku as soon as he could, but OJ kinda hung on, like a toddler with a security blankie. Poor Neku had to shake him off. They all took a moment to look around.

The display windows were mostly smashed in; here and there you'd have the occasional scrap of tattered cloth, a possible remnant of an Autumn Dragon shirt from Dragon Couture, or maybe the hem off a Cocktail Queen dress, but overall the place was pretty much looted. Whoever had done the looting had done a fine job of breaking everything in sight. It looked pretty much like a herd of clinically insane wildebeest had been released into the mall, and then forgotten about. Most of the escalators were busted to pieces, the kawaii desu signs lay in broken heaps of rent metal and twisted neon pipe. Sometimes the corner of your eye would catch a flicker of motion, of shadow, just like in Shibu-Q Heads. And just like in Shibu-Q Heads, if you turned around there would be nothing there to see. It was rather unnerving.

"This is..." OJ began.

"Rather unnerving," Joshua said quickly, ripping the words right out of the Other Guy's mouth.

"_Stupid_," snapped OJ.

Neku made noises of parental disapproval and they all began to writhe like flagella dunked in Germ-X, pushing piles of junk over and tripping over felled iron beams as they attempted to claw their way out.

There had been a huge cave in in front of the regular entrance, meaning they couldn't really go out that way. Everyone knows that windows have a one-smash limit imposed on them. It was a bit of an expedition, all things considered; particularly because none of our little Triad of Stupid was very physically adept. Joshua kept tripping, Neku kept whacking his head, and OJ's odd, limping gait was hardly an asset. Of especially memorable mention was the point in time where the only working escalator broke down with our Joshua and the Other One still on it. They stood there, frozen like deer-shaped ice sculptures caught in the headlights, unable to move until Neku found the emergency switch and gave it a good kick, thus spurring the escalator back into motion and saving the day. Think about that for a minute.

Eventually, they managed to get outside through one of the back entrances. Staggering out into the bright, golden sunlight, the newly-forged trio stood around and blinked for a few minutes, adjusting their eyes to the bright, impetuous dazzly-radiance and stuff. They stumbled around to the front of the giant building like a parade of drunkards.

The area outside of Shibukyu Superstore was normally crowded with people, but today, that was apparently not the case. The expanse of pavement that stretched before them was as dry and barren of people as a man-eating lizard convention in the middle of the desert.

"It's gotten kind of warm, hasn't it," our Joshua muttered, fanning his face miserably. Heat meant sweating. Sweating bad.

"Oh, grow up, a little sweat won't erase you from existence," Neku grumbled.

"Easy for you to say, Ru Paul! Look at you, I bet you've got yourself a nice little breeze –"

Neku grabbed our Josh by the shirt and shook him a little, garbling incoherently.

OJ watched them bickering and willed his eyes not to mist up. Oh, great. You're not gonna start _crying _again, are you?

"...N-No way!" sniffled the poor boy, hastily wiping his eyes.

Our Neku dragged our Joshua off to a nearby wall so he could slam his head against it a few times. (Joshua was to learn that drag was a touchy subject for Neku Sakuraba.) Meanwhile, OJ kind of just stood there, watching them with the fog of nostalgia wetting the corners of his eyes. He remembered when Other Neku used to slam _his _head against walls...

[Other]_ Neku_... OJ sighed, his breath reeking of melancholy. _If it weren't for me, he'd still be around...ohh...it's just not fair._

Oh, look. Now they were wrestling. Neku had to call time-outs every few seconds to pull his skirt down, so it was moving pretty sluggishly, but Josh didn't seem to mind. He was clearly glad to wait a minute or two if it meant he could tackle-headlock Neku immediately after. OJ smiled wistfully. _They look like good friends...if a bit vitriolic._

His sad little moment was abruptly cut short by a titanium gripper. OJ barely had time to react before a cold, humming hand sealed off his airway and pulled him back, back, back, hooked around and kind of stuffed him into a dark alcove nearby. OJ was aware of cardboard boxes being kicked out of the way, and nearly stumbled over a coil of rope as he was hauled roughly backwards. When the hand was finally lifted, OJ gasped for air and whirled around in disbelief.

"You!"

"Me," said Joshua #6. There are too many Joshuas in this fanfiction, but that's what I get for writing about clones. "Tsk, oh, you got yourself all dirty...well."

They stood now in an alleyway, near 104; the ground was littered with crates and boxes, and there was a trash can laying on its side. Sticking out of the disturbed rubbish bin was something metallic and rod-like, sort of like the handle of a pistol, thrown away by one Anton Chekov because it was taking up unnecessary amounts of space - hanging on his wall like some kind of dusty painting, seriously. Who even needs something like that. Unimportant garbage should not be displayed proudly on the walls of one's residence like so many Harvard diplomas. If the gun has no importance, it shouldn't even be there!

Not that this was a gun. It was actually the smooth, iron handle of a candelabra. The heavy kind, the kind that could easily knock you out if you got clobbered over the head with one.

Just putting that out there.

"What are you doing here?" OJ asked, panic blooming in his pits.

"I came to inform you there's been a change of plans," the clone said, smiling prettily. "Prepare the two sacrifices and have them ready to go at the altar in one hour."

"Wh-what? No-"

#6's sweet grin abruptly twisted into a hideous scowl. "Do you defy me? You do realize, my pet, that at the snap of my fingers I could have all of my brothers upon you in one instant?" His lip curled. "You realize that, if you disobey me, I could kill you right here? I could slice your abdomen open, pull out the intestines – ooh, yeah, you forgot about those, hm? Well, I could rip them right out of you – right now, it wouldn't be rocket science – and eat them slowly while you lay there, watching. I could slice your throat across with my knife and draw pictures on your tummy with the nice, warm blood; or, you know, maybe I could just carve them directly into your pretty little face instead. They'd last longer that way, tee hee."

OJ blinked, numb panic thudding against the carapace of his skull. "You can't-"

"Oh, but I can. And I will, if I must." #6 looked him over thoughtfully, smirking coyly to himself. His voice was soft and silken as he continued: "I could, in fact, tie you up right this minute and use _you_ as the sacrifice, in place of the other two."

"N-no!"

"That's why we keep rope in these alleys, you know." Josh #6 grinned, kicking at the nearby coil. "All these defective units, getting ideas...the point is, my dear, ideas are very dangerous things." He reached out and gently stroked OJ's cheek with a thin, sharp finger. The boy shuddered; he was sick with disgust, sick with loathing. "I'm a very important person, you know. You can have me on your side, or you can be dead." He inspected his nails carelessly. "It doesn't matter to me."

"You-"

"It's in your best interest to do what I say. Now, go!"

"Wh...what if I..." OJ didn't get to finish that sentence.

The clone's eyes flashed mercilessly. "...Do_ not _disappoint me, little boy. I _will_ be watching." He reached out and adjusted the red rose knotted firmly in OJ's tangled hair, tying it tight enough that it practically dug into his scalp. OJ felt a stabbing pain in his head, joined swiftly by a heavy thunk in his stomach.

It was as if a hot haze washed over his brain, a warm deluge of pins and needles rushing down his spinal column – and just as suddenly as the odd sensation had appeared, so it did end. OJ blinked stupidly, shaking to the very bones. _What did he just-?_

"_That's_ better." #6 grinned nastily and he waved goodbye, melting back into the shadows from whence he came. You could hardly hear the click of his heels as he prowled back down the alleyway to destinations unknown.

_How can he be watching me?_ OJ wondered. His heart thudded painfully in his throat._ ...Wait, how did he know I was here? He's been gone all day..._

Suddenly, he realized something. _The roses-_

In a flash, he was grappling with the horrible thing, that hateful blossom on his head – but as his fingers touched it, they burned and blistered. He yelped, tried again – thorns like fire pierced his hands before he even touched the thing, like the hideous flower was encased in an invisible field of some kind. OJ cried out in alarm and grabbed the rose again, mindless of the pain – only conscious of the need to get the thing OFF – but no, no, it would not come off, no matter how he pulled.

He realized the awful truth – it had grown into his scalp, somehow. Somehow, somehow the hideous, terrible abomination of a flower was grabbing onto his head, as if with spider legs.

_How is that even possible?_ He thought, panic turning his mind's eye into a racing whirl of white-hot fear and red rage. _It was just a flower two minutes ago...what did...what did he _do?

All was silent in the dark little alleyway. All, save for the fierce pounding of OJ's frantic little heart.

_What am I going to do? The flower...he can...the plant...Pamela...she...they can _see_ through the...calm down, calm down, Joshua. Think, you've got to think. _He clenched and unclenched his fists, shaking. _What do I do?_

He thought of our Joshua and our Neku, the heroes of this story; he thought of their offer.

He thought of the clones.

He thought of what he'd lost. He thought of what he had to lose.

And then he decided.

_I'll do what I have to,_ he thought dully, staring down at his grimy shoes. _I'll do what I must to make things right again..._

* * *

Our heroes, meanwhile, had just succeeded in tiring themselves out again. The Composer and his Proxy were sitting down on the hot, empty sidewalk, out of breath and panting like dogs. Wrestling at a moment's notice kind of takes it out of you. After a minute, Neku reached up and adjusted his mini top hat.

"Sorry I went off on you again," Neku muttered.

"It's fine," Joshua said cheerfully. "What's a little psychopathy here and there, hm? Now we can relate~"

"Oh, _fabulous._"

"Hee, hee..."

In truth, our Josh was preoccupied with more pressing issues – issues that pressed far harder than having another bruise for his collection. _I've got to get back to the motel and send that message as fast as possible_, he thought grimly, gnawing on the inside of his mouth. _Without Neku knowing, of course. If Volcanobrain finds me out, _hoo boy_. He might actually kill me._

_...Again._

The Composer cast a quick glance over his arm to see how Volcanobrain was doing at the moment. The Proxy was hardly recognizable in that goofy dress, with his feathered Orange-Crush-flavored hair tickling his shoulders and sticking to his cheeks in places. Those cheeks were slightly flushed with exertion, but if one were new to the scene, it might look like he was blushing due to the fact that he had "sat on Josh-Josh-tan, desu. And touched his cold, maggoty skin, _kyaaa~! _Like lovers...!" Joshua had grown used to vaguely homoerotic situations jumping him at night and trying to grab his, er, wallet, and so he was well-prepared to give Neku the benefit of the doubt.

He kept making priceless faces of utter boyish disgust at the S-class "absolute territory" being invoked on his poor thighs. It would have been cute on a high-school girl, perhaps – but Neku's kneecaps were already tearing the lacy stockings to ribbons. There was a _reason_ he only ever wore shorts, dammit: pants tended to last at most a day on Neku's legs. You can just_ forget _flimsy stockings. Put them out of your mind and never think of them again, because they are out of the running forever and evermore. Neku smiled grimly, plucking at the flowery, lacy kneesocks. With any luck, they'd disintegrate within the hour. Wait, are they stockings or kneesocks? Neku had no clue. They were white, lacy, with black ribbons weaving through the florid tops. They came up to about an inch or so above his knees. What did that make them?

...Who cares? They're both demonic.

Joshua decided that Neku looked relatively okay. Well, that was good. He went back to his mullings-over of the situation: _I_ could _just tell him outright – pfft! No way! He'd bite my head off, chew it thoroughly, and then spit out the eyeballs! He would get entirely too angry, I just know it; heck, I would too. And I don't _want_ him to get mad at me. I don't know how close to the edge he is, if he snaps and I'm right there, he wouldn't..._

At that moment, Josh realized something. _I don't want him to get mad at me because – not because I don't want to get hurt. I don't care. Pedestrian pain kind of pales in comparison to, y'know, _dying_. I don't want him to get mad at me because...because he won't _like_ me anymore._

_...Good god, gypsies in my head! But I know what I mean._ Joshua did indeed know what he himself meant. Even though this little adventure had been incredibly awkward for all parties involved, and even though it was disgusting and awful falafelwaffles just watching those clones engage in their odd behavioral tendencies..Joshua did genuinely enjoy hanging out with Neku. He just wished it wasn't in this context. And he kind of wanted their friendship to not be a temporary thing, a result of the survival instinct and nothing more – he didn't want to think that Neku was only putting up with him because he had to. Joshua thought of how it was at home – Neku, with his friends, be-bopping around the town and living the high life while Joshua sat in his sewer and played tic-tac-toe with himself. It wasn't fair.

Sure, he was a jerk, but he was still a person. He was still a kid. He was still _lonely_.

And it was this loneliness – this deep-rooted desire for attention and, even moreso, _admiration_ – that drove Joshua to be an idiot and not tell Neku about the problem outright. Josh figured he could work it out by himself without anyone ever being the wiser, and so he kept his undead mouth clamped shut. Instead of raising the issue like he probably should have, he sat there in the hot, golden sunshine and stared aimlessly at the toes of his nice shoes for a minute or so, tapping them together idly as a lull of silence passed over our two heroes.

If he had told Neku that he had forgotten to contact Mr. H, and if he had asked Neku if they could nip back to the motel room and remedy this little issue, things might have turned out differently. Or, perhaps they would have turned out the same – regardless, it's more cinematic this way.

"Hey, Joshua," Neku said after a minute, staring pointedly at his dress. "Is, uh...do all dresses whine?"

"Why are you asking _me?_" Joshua shot back, slightly insulted.

"Because you're fabulous," Neku ricocheted. "You would know about this stuff, Mr. Denim Miniskirt and Dragon Couture High Heels."

"That was a one-time thing," Joshua said blandly. Then, "Your dress is _whining?_" It honestly seemed like it should be the other way around.

Neku nodded, eyebrows knotted up in perplexed...uh, perplexitude. "Yeah, just feel it."

"...Thanks, but no."

Neku sighed and put his hand on his thigh, feeling it buzz and prickle like static. If he strained his ears, he could hear a very soft, high-pitched _whine_ emanating from under his hand. "Seriously, what is up with that?"

Joshua arched an eyebrow. "Well...if you're talking about the way some things seem to vibrate when you touch them, that is the Dissonance."

"I'm not a Musician, Josh. I can't Understand your Musical Technobabble Jargon that is one thing but Probably Means Something Else. And is always Capitalized like it's Important but is also Probably Not Very."

"Shut up, _I _don't come up with these things." Joshua tightened his ponytail. "Everything you see, hear, feel and touch...everything is made from vibrations. Vibrations, at different frequencies, create layers of reality that not many can perceive. So, for example, in our reality, you have the RG and the UG, and the Noise Realm – three different worlds, all occupying the same space. This can happen because each layer exists on a different frequency. Alternate universes can exist because they are in a different...pitch, or key, or something. Suppose our universe exists in the key of C. _This_ universe, depending, could be in either the key of B or D, or maybe D sharp, depending on how far we jumped. Change the key of a song and suddenly it sounds completely different, right? It's like that."

"And the dissonance is?"

"Capital dee, Dear. Suppose that you play a C chord over a D sharp."

"_I'm music illiterate, Joshua..._" Neku sang.

"Hush, you! The notes aren't the same – you can hear them reacting, one on the other. They don't sound the same, right? They either harmonize or clash. It's the same thing with our pitch-key things. We are two C chords in a D-key song. It sounds a little funny."

Neku made a face.

"It's our...uh, base pitch, conflicting with this dimension's base pitch." Joshua waved his hands around to illustrate. "Does that make sense? ...Ooor am I hurting Nekkun's ickle baby headdikins, desu~?"

"You better cut that out, or Nekkun will hurt _your_ wibble icky baby headdikins, desu."

"You already have," Joshua reminded him. "Several times, actually."

"Well! Excuse me." Neku rolled his eyes.

They sat there in silence, just perched flatly on the sidewalk with their feet in the street. Neku tugged irritably at his ruffly skirts, grinding his teeth, wondering when Mr. H was going to show up. The thought of CAT, his hero, seeing him in these digs was simply mortifying.

Suddenly the silence was broken by the slightly-offbeat sound of quickly approaching not-so-nice shoes. Our heroes both looked up in unison to see OJ limping towards them, expression rather grim. The boy looked distraught, and kept fidgeting in a manner that gave the suggestion of a big damn secret halfway to spring-boarding off the tip of his tongue and splattering all over the sidewalk in a gruesome display of revelation. Our heroes frowned as one; they had kind of forgotten about him.

"Um, Neku, excuse me?" OJ said softly, wringing his hands. They looked oddly red, in Joshua's opinion. "Can I talk to you about something? It's pretty important..."

"Can _I _talk, Orange Juice-tan?" Joshua asked dryly.

"I'd rather you not," snapped OJ.

The two glared at each other, like two angry images in a cracked and grimy mirror. Joshua was the first to break eye contact, looking away with a sneer. "The flower suits you."

"Hmph..."

"What do you want to talk with me about, Other-Josh?" Neku asked, slightly louder than was necessary.

OJ stared miserably at his red palms. "Well...it's kind of a personal question, actually..."

Here, our Joshua burst out in disbelieving laughter.

"About the Game!" shouted OJ, ears suddenly turning pink. "About the Game, asshole!"

"_I certainly hope so!_"

Neku grunted and rolled his eyes. He hauled himself up and settled awkwardly into a standing position, balancing on his platform shoes. "I don't know what it is that you wouldn't already know, but...sure, ask me whatever you want."

OJ sighed. "Can we go somewhere else...where he won't hear?"

"I'm you," said Joshua. "Remember that, now."

"Why should we?" Neku narrowed his eyes, suspicious. "He's my partner. What do I need to hear that he can't?"

"Because I just...he isn't very _mature_," OJ sniffed, crinkling his nose in our Joshua's direction. "He'll laugh at me and say something rude, and then I'll do the same thing back at him, and then my train of thought will be derailed. So, please."

"_Hey_..."

Neku nodded slowly. "That _is_ true. Go ahead, lead the way – but not too far away, mind you."

OJ laughed nervously. "Hee hee! Don't worry, this will only cost you a moment of your time..."

Neku glanced at our Joshua, who shrugged carelessly and picked at a hangnail. Neku took this as a "Sure, why not," and crossed his arms, looking pointedly at OJ. His wish granted, Orange Juice-tan smiled weakly and turned around, guiding Neku off across the hot, empty street. Our Joshua watched them leave out of the corner of his eye, sulking a little. He rather despised how Neku was getting all buddy-buddy with that other him. Especially because that other him was so weak and snivelly. _There has to be a reason that guy is so clingy_, Joshua thought darkly, inspecting his nails. _The way he seems to be very respectful of Neku...there's a very good reason. There must be._

_If Other Joshua is an alternate universe person just like we are, and he's asking questions about the Game, then the likelihood that he is a Composer on his home world is very slim. _Joshua narrowed his eyes. _So, then...how did he get here, if he isn't able to planar jump? ...Neku?_

_...Where is the "Other Neku," anyway?_

Joshua frowned slightly. He'd pulled off a particularly large hangnail and now his finger was oozing ectoplasm. He wiped his hand on his pants leg, cross. _If the Other Neku is the Composer...let's see, how would that work?_

_Suppose that Neku and I switched roles – I was the Proxy, and he was the Composer. How was my life before I died? I can't remember too well... _Joshua fingered his chin, thoughtful. _Well, I don't think I was ever too much of a social butterfly. I suppose I would still have my Dead-O-Vision™, so I would know about the Game – and by extension, WildKat and Mr. H? Perhaps I would have gone to the CAT mural, after figuring out Mr. H's pseudo-Banksy persona. Probably not too often, because I doubt the backstreets of Udagawa would have appealed to a sheltered rich kid, but...maybe. Perhaps, then – supposing Neku never learned that Friendship is Magic, he would have continued to shut people out, closing himself off from the city. Or maybe the darkness in people's hearts disgusted him to the point where he wanted to get rid of them all. I know I felt that way, once._

_This would have spurred him to start The Game, and...maybe he would have shot me, or something. Cut to three weeks later... _Joshua checked to see if the cut was still bleeding. Not really. _I don't think I would have wanted to leave the UG...heh, I like it there. So, what then? Would I have opted to become a Reaper or what? A Conductor?_ Joshua rubbed his finger contemplatively. _Well, a lot is up to the specifics of the situation, but...being a Reaper was fun, I think I would have wanted that. Assuming I became a Reaper, Conductor or not, I would be allowed to stay in the RG and re-tune to the UG whenever I wanted. This would have let me remain in close proximity to Neku, as one of his Reapers, and maybe...maybe we became friends, that way?_

_If that's truly the case, then...perhaps I would harbor some sort of hero worship for Neku, given that he was the Composer, lord of the UG, the one who gave me this nice little setup, my _friend_...maybe I'd see him the way my partner Neku sees Mr. H? _Joshua nodded, slowly. _Makes sense, I guess. Even though I can't truly picture myself harboring hero worship for anyone, I suppose if I wasn't such a Charlie Sheen...hehe. Anyway. I guess it's possible that other Neku could have wound up asking other me to play a game of hopscotch or something...and then began a fanfic entitled Neku Trips, I guess. The parallel of this one..._

Joshua frowned. _So...where'd he go?_

It didn't make sense. As a Composer himself, Joshua understood that he was instrumental to getting him and his friend home. He was the one with the knowledge of the HG, of Mr. H's Producer status, of vibes and Noise and the Internets. And Neku was even more eager to get home than he was, if that was even possible. Why, then, would Other Neku vanish, leaving his quarry all alone? Neku was honorable; he had a strong sense of morals. It didn't make sense for him to just dump Other Joshua off in the middle of a dimension full of crackpots.

If you assumed that maybe Other Neku had been corrupted by becoming a Composer, it completely negated them ever coming here – a corrupt Neku without morals or a sense of obligation would have blown up Shibuya anyway. A corrupt Neku wouldn't have wasted time with a Game or a Proxy, he would have jumped the gun and turned Shibuya into the Second Incident. So he would have to have some kind of compassion, right? Some kind of fondness for OJ, somewhere, if only by merit of the fact that they seemed to have been literally close enough for ON to teleport them here? (For example: if Joshua couldn't stand Neku, then he wouldn't even get within a thirty-foot radius of the kid, let alone humor him with hopscotch.)

But then, that didn't match up with the current situation. Josh began to get a sick feeling in his stomach as the pieces began to fit themselves together.

_Neku, the Composer, is strangely absent..._

_Other me was hanging out with those foofy clones...the clones that seem to home in on Nekus..._

_A forgiving, compassionate Neku would be tolerant of the clones' behavior and understand the importance of blending in...therefore, he would allow the clones to do their stupid harem thing..._

_Suppose we took that to its logical conclusion...but no, if he was raped, he'd still be here. He wouldn't just_ cease to exist_. That doesn't make sense. So..._

_So...the Joshes must not...have anything to do with rape, or sexual contact of any kind, given what they lack. Then...what ARE they doing to the Nekus, anyway?_

Joshua was momentarily stumped, but not really – deep down, he felt that he knew, on some subconscious level; deep down, he felt he had known all along, somehow. Composer Foresight, or simple intuition? It didn't matter. The main issue here was that he now had to go about plumbing the depths of this subconscious knowledge and dredging up the awful truth, bringing its rancid form into the harsh light of the conscious mind. In other words, he just had to figure out what it was...what these Joshes were really after, if not hot yaoi lemon parties. Joshua scrunched up his face and sat there, waiting – all the pieces were in place, he just had to wait for the image to reveal itself. Sort of like a Magic Eye jigsaw puzzle. Which probably doesn't exist – and if it does, it shouldn't.

Suddenly, the boy remembered what Neku had said a chapter or two ago - _"Call me crazy, but...when they look at me, it almost feels like they want to eat me..."_

Joshua's eyes widened. In disbelief. In horror. _No...No! No way!_

But it made too much _sense_ to be anything but true.

The truth of it all sunk into Joshua's head quite quickly. He was very calm about it. _So...the Joshes surround the Nekus in packs, fatten them up with – with cheesecake, oh my God...and then, when the Nekus are convinced they can't be anything but nice, when they're just fat enough... _Joshua shivered. _They're like Morlocks..._

_So Other Neku isn't here because...They ate him. They must have._ The Composer felt sick. _They ate him, and now they're going to eat Neku!_

_OH MY...wait, that was a stupid movie. ...ARGH CANNIBALS_

It was horrible, the very idea of it – but inside his black, blighted heart, Joshua KNEW it was true, this time for sure. Joshua also kind of wanted to smack himself – how could he _ever _have thought these clones were rape machines? So stupid! Stupid stupid dumb!

"Who would do this?" he asked of nobody in particular, frozen to the spot. His head was spinning in circles – it felt like he was miles above the ground, staring numbly at the earth. Unable to move. "Why? Why us? Who is the _sick bastard_ that hates us this much?"

Joshua had plenty of enemies, but he couldn't think of anyone in Shibuya who hated him and Neku to this degree. This was beyond hatred. This was pure and utter _loathing,_ in its truest, blackest form. Someone had gone through the trouble of building and programming a legion of thinking, lucid robots in their likeness, purely to watch them seduce and kill each other.

Why, though? Just..._why?_ This went beyond a simple grudge. This went beyond the scope of anything the normal human mind could ever want to create. The person behind this was _wrong_. They were sick and wrong and _broken_. They were insane, ass-backwards, completely without a conscience. They had been driven off the edge, their mind had been shattered; and Joshua got the sick notion that somehow, the original Joshua and Neku of this plane were responsible for it. In whatever way, the person behind this mayhem had equated Joshua and Neku with their suffering. And - these clones - this was their way of getting back at them? Was that it?

At that moment, Joshua realized that Neku had been gone too long.

His black, blighted heart jumped into his mouth and started hammering on the backs of his teeth in a desperate bid for freedom. He felt like a black abyss had opened up in his gut and replaced his innards with cold, endless space for the second time that morning. _No, no, no no no no no no no no nonononononononoNO!_

Suddenly, he could move again. Joshua didn't fart around, now. He jumped to his feet, heedless of how his head throbbed in angry protest, and he was running, running, running, not even caring about sweat any more. _Neku, Neku...no! No! Oh, God, and I just let this happen! I just...I...no! NO!_

He ran, and ran, and he ran to the dark alley that Neku had vanished into. It looked vaguely familiar – was it the same one from yesterday? – but that wasn't important, now. That wasn't important.

What _was_ important was that Neku was lying on the ground. Unmoving. Still. Ropes tied crudely around wrist and ankle. Lying there, still.

So still.

Other Josh stood over him, hunched slightly at the shoulder. Trembling. A burning, golden symbol clamped to his skull, a tribal mass of inked legs and evil energy.

Alternate universe or not, Joshua was pissed the fuck off. To put it courteously. "YOU!"

OJ whirled around and stared at him, an insane glee lighting up his eyes like a flickering flame. A maniacal grin split his face, and he began to laugh. "Hee, hee...hee hee hee hee HEE HEE HEE HEE_HEE_HEE_HEE_HEE_HEEHEE!_"

He laughed, and laughed. Shaking with mirth. Tears, bleeding from the corners of his eyes. Shaking with laughter, or grief, or something – laughing, laughing, laughing. Grinning. Laughing.

He spread his arms wide, laughing uncontrollably. "FIGURED IT OUT, DID YOU? HEE_HEEHEE_HEE, I CAN SEE IT! I CAN SEE IT IN YOUR EYES!

"BUT YOU'RE TOO LATE! YOU'RE ALL TOO LATE! It's too late for you! I'll buy my freedom at the price of your lives - I'm going home! I'M GOING HOME, AND YOU'RE GOING TO DIE! AHA! AHAHAHA_HAHAHA!_"

At that instant, Joshua realized it – Other Josh had something clutched in his hand. Something long, stiff, black, and ugly. A rod. A metal rod? No – a candelabra?

The last thing he saw was OJ's psychopathic grin as he dashed forth, bringing the hateful iron weapon crashing down on Joshua's head –

Then all was black, and Joshua knew no more.

* * *

**A/N: **I have nothing to say for once.

Except my old USB that was yellow broke so I got a new one that is on par with baby pandas! C:

seriously it's a panda

hur hur hur the least racist animal


	17. In which Other Joshua Slips A Whole Lot

**_JOSHUA TRIPS_**

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: IN WHICH JOSHUA AND NEKU GET SACRIFICED TO A WEED

The Story So Far: Joshua and Neku have been knocked out of commission! The story is now called Other Joshua Slips, because he's the main character now~  
Okay not really, he's too weepy for that job. But the fact remains that Nekky and Josh-Josh have been knocked unconscious by that traitorous loon, and now...their future looks bleak and stuff.

Of Note In This Chapter: Neku gets harassed by naughty micro-tentacles, Joshua bitches about his head, and OJ eats eggs Benedict Arnold. And slips. A few times. You know. Once or twice.

Rating: T

* * *

When we last left our heroes, they were – oh, good Lord...

Our Joshua's limp, pallid form lay sprawled on the ground. Ectoplasm trickled down his forehead, flowing freely from where he had been struck. His chest didn't so much as twitch with the faintest stirrings of breath – he was as still and as rigid as if he had been carved out of white marble. Barely a few meters away, our Neku was in a similar state. An ugly, bloody wound decorated his crown as well; he had just been attacked from _behind_, so it was hidden in his hair. Unlike Josh, Neku was still breathing – albeit barely. The Proxy's limbs had been tied together with rope, so that when he eventually came to he wouldn't be able to strangle the nearest thing with a neck, no matter how much he wanted to. In an ironic twist, it was the same rope that had bound N99 the day before. The knots themselves were simple fisherman's knots - OJ was not a boy scout.

Speak of the devil...

OJ stood over the two bodies, his entire body shaking all over. The slightly-bloodied candelabra trembled in his white-knuckled grip, looking like some kind of twisted, blighted bramble. He did it. He did it! He had knocked those two guys – the sacrifices – out, and now all he had to do was drag them around the corner to 104. OJ smiled hugely – he would save Neku yet, he would! Hee hee hee! His violet eyes were as wide as they'd ever been as he surveyed the carnage. Two sacrifices – what could that buy him? The crazed boy tapped Neku's thigh with the toe of his not-injured foot, making sure the ropes held. How about a big, fat, shiny ticket out of this hellhole? "Ohhh, yeah," OJ said to himself, humming a deranged little tune.

He reached down and clumsily picked up the rest of the rope, setting to work on Our Joshua's spreadeagled limbs. This simply would not happen with a candelabra in tow, so OJ dropped it back in the trash can he'd unearthed it from. He knelt on the unconscious undead's narrow chest and tried to pull the arms together, but they were already as rigid as the aforementioned white marble. OJ frowned.

A knock on the head from a candelabra shouldn't kill you, should it? A concussion at the very worst, right? He strained and pulled the two smooth wrists together with all his might – and then decided he'd just tie the boy's thighs together instead. If his arms were free at the moment, well, it wasn't so much of a big deal, right? Joshuas have kind of pitiful upper-body strength, anyway.

And so, OJ bound the two as tightly as he could with scalded hands and a piss-poor knowledge of knot tying. "Good grief, I would _kill_ for some Velcro bondage cuffs right now," he grumbled to himself. He would remember to keep a pair or two handy from this moment onwards, assuming he ever got back home. Which he _would._

When the two out-of-commissioners were suitably restrained, OJ set to the arduous task of hauling them out of the alleyway and in through one of 104's side entrances. He began with our Neku, gingerly gripping the boy around the bony, kneesocked ankles and propping the platform shoe-clad feet on his shoulder, taking a firm hold of the boy's calves, and dragging him across the dirty ground in this way. OJ made sure to politely avert his eyes from the stripey purple bunny panties that _probably_ weren't a native denizen of Neku Sakuraba's closet, although he wasn't really sure why he was trying to be chivalrous if he was about to kill the kid. He kept accidentally whacking poor old Neku's head on crates and the other junk littered around everywhere, so it was really probably less out of respect for Neku and more out of "Ew oh God look away did not need to see that."

He knew which side entrance to use because it was the one that had "HIGH CLERGYEES ONLY" carved into the metal, undoubtedly thanks to a certain pocketknife. OJ shouldered his way in, his going impeded by his ungainly quarry. But only the ungainliness. Neku was surprisingly light, OJ observed dully, gently laying the skinny body down in the dark corridor.

And now for his alternate self. OJ struggled a bit more with this one, given that there were roughly forty more pounds of pure jackass to deal with. But OJ strained and strained and, eventually, he managed to drag Joshua into 104 the same way, dumping him on the floor rather ungraciously. _What a lard, man._ OJ massaged his wimptastic biceps reproachfully, shutting the door behind him.

They were now in some kind of dark, tepid corridor. The air was thick with the tropical smell of leaf rot and raw meat that you might recognize from chapter six, indicating that the Heart of Pamela was very close indeed. However, there was barely any light in this damp, moist hallway, with its ceiling and walls throbbing with spongy vines. The only source of illumination came from a faint orange glow up ahead. The entire thing was awfully claustrophobic in OJ's opinion, so he quickly set to work trying to haul both bodies along with him as he marched off in the direction of the flickering glow. It was pitiful to watch.

"Need some help?"

OJ practically jumped out of his skin, organs, and cardiovascular system all in one shot. "GYAAAH-_UH!_"

He whirled around and saw a Josh clone standing there, shiny eyes barely visible in the dank and the dark. He was watching him, but he wasn't moving. It was Josh #4, the little helper droid of the group, from the looks of it. OJ's disgusted, frightened grimace relaxed fractionally – of all those cannibal vermin, #4 was probably the one OJ liked the best. Or, at least, the only one whose act he could really stomach.

Said helper droid grinned a toothy grin. "I'll take the Joshua. They're heavier. ...Before you ask, dear, I _know_ you defective units are all such frail little fawns; we wouldn't want you to get plumb tuckered out and faint in the middle of the Tithing, would we? Hee hee..."

OJ nodded slowly. "Okay, um. Thanks. I think?" _He talks like my grandma..._ OJ shuddered – never would he see his Nanna's chunky lasagna in the same light again. He draped Neku over his shoulder, wincing at how the bony boy's ribs dug uncomfortably into his shoulder. Also at the skirt. That was just...no. "Let's go."

#4's creepy grin never wavered as he carelessly hefted our Joshua, picking him up as easily as if he were a tiny ragdoll. The clone strode down the darkened hallway with the lithe, confident grace of a panther in the jungle, while OJ trailed behind, tripping occasionally.

They didn't talk much.

Even so, the presence of someone else helped OJ feel calmer.

After a moment or two of walking, it became clear that this corridor had stopped being a thing of man-made origin a long time ago. The ground was spongy and slimy and soft, and all surfaces were covered with slippery, scummy vines. Even the floor. _Especially_ the floor, OJ realized, much to his injured foot's dismay. Hairlike creepers tumbled from seemingly random spots in the ceiling, getting in OJ's eyes and casually lifting up poor Neku's skirt, as if inspecting the merchandise. But that was silly. Everyone knows plants can't think, move, or be perverted. And the farther in they went, the more it felt to OJ that he was spelunking in the veiny, snotty nostril of some giant eldritch thing.

Which he was. But nobody had told him that, on account of the fact that nobody liked him. The context clues were kind of hard to ignore at this point, however.

The tunnel – for that's what it was: no longer a corridor, but a _tunnel__ –_ wound up very suddenly, incurring a steep vertical incline. Stepping forth with little regard for this, #4 just dug his sharpened fingernails into the plants and hauled himself upward, no bother. OJ watched him go, feeling rather miffed. "Who does he think I am, _Spiderman?_" he grumbled uselessly. Nevertheless, OJ trundled up to the stark slope with a sigh of resignation.

He dug his fingers in, worming them in and in between the criss-crossing layers of vines, slick with slime. The tendrils clutched and gripped ever-so-slightly at his hands, causing OJ to make an array of bizarre faces. He wiggled the toe of his not-injured foot onto a thick, sturdy-looking vine and held his breath. So far, so good.

Then arose the problem of taking Neku with him.

The first time he tried, he realized that it was really damn hard to drape a teenager over your shoulder and try to scale a wall without shoving your head on top of their ass and breathing deeply. OJ was sure there had to be a way less ridiculously stupid, and tried to just drag Neku up with one hand – but his fingers were coated in Pamela essence and Neku's knobby wrist slid right through his grip. The temporary transvestite hit the ground with a wet, sticky THWUMP – and almost immediately the creepers were upon the boy's stockings, exploring the tears and rips with great curiosity.

OJ pokerfaced and pulled himself out of Pamela's wet walls (_shllUURGHK_), dropping down at Neku's side and irritably brushing the bright green creepers away with sharp sweeps of his hand. "No, no...Shoo! Stupid plant..." OJ wasn't about to let his best friend's alternate self be date-raped by a plant that he wasn't even dating – even if OJ was about to kill the alternate self in question. It was still an insult to Neku's memory. Even though, if everything went correctly, this Neku would never know about it. OJ swallowed hard and plucked our Neku from the clutches of the creepers, holding him bridal style.

Wait a minute, bridal style? If there's one thing I know about bridal style, it's that you can't climb like that. OJ realized this after a second:

"...Ugh, I can't climb like _that!_"

So OJ dropped the poor, unconscious Proxy and wiped his hands on his pants, grumbling fiercely.

He adopted the Luke-and-Leia technique, sacrificing one arm to pin Neku to his side – but by now, they were both so greased up with slimy plant juice that he might as well have been trying to juggle wet bars of soap. OJ began to lose patience.

"Get UP there, dammit!" he cried, attempting to just toss our Neku up the incline. Neku's limp form went up about a half-inch and then came crashing down on OJ's face.

Joshuas have kind of pitiful upper-body strength, you know.

The two idiots splashed down into a growing slime puddle. Pamela's tunnel appeared to be getting wetter and wetter the longer this little game played out. OJ's ears turned the color of love and he grimaced, writhing. Little, worm like protrusions were creeping out of the spongy vine floor and oozing up to fondle his back...his legs... "Stop that! STOP THAT!"

Scientifically, this was just the plant's version of salivation – two warm little chili dogs had just wandered in to her mouth, and now she – well, _it _was lubricating its acid glands by oozing some kind of clear fluid while the creepers reached up to hold them in place. The slime would keep the prey too slippery to climb away to safety, and the creepers would pin them down while the milky-gray acid secretions finally finished warming up and began the digestion process. The vines would then slowly envelop the two wriggling bodies, constricting them like anacondas and squeezing the air from their crumpled lungs, while their flesh slowly numbed and bubbled and melted away, only to be absorbed into the lush greenery. After a time, nothing would remain of OJ and our Neku, save for an odd, human-shaped lump in the tunnel wall and a lot of BAWW-ing emo poetry from our Joshua.

Well, that's what WOULD happen, if OJ didn't start getting his shit together.

"Hey!" OJ griped, shoving Neku's prostrate form off and angrily pulling wads of creepy creepers out of his pants. "This isn't _exactly_ a trip to the toy store, okay?"

He peeled himself and Neku off the slimy floor with some difficulty, only to have his limp activate at a rather untimely moment. He wound up on the floor again, face in Neku's board-flat gut region. "_Bluh! Slime in my mouth!_"

"Need some help?"

OJ practically jumped out of his skin, organs, and cardiovascular system all in one shot. "GYAAAH-_UH!_"

He whirled around and saw a Josh clone peeking over the top of the incline, grinning creepily. "Or am I interrupting something? If so, my apologies."

The condescending, cold sneer that lay hidden under this one's mannerisms identified it as Joshua #2 instantly. OJ narrowed his eyes – he did not care tuppence for Twoey. Not one bit. "Yeah, you're interrupting something, all right - a hot, steamy session of complete and utter _incompetence_. Help me up."

"What's the magic word~?"

"_Now!_"

#2 rolled his eyes. "You're so clever."

There came the sounds of soft, familiar voices from somewhere not far behind the clone's foofy head. #2 made a face and suddenly ducked back into the darkness from whence he came. The voices escalated in debacle.

OJ sighed and plucked halfheartedly at the creepy creepers creeping on poor old Neku.

#2's head popped out again, looking awfully reproachful. "Well. _They_ say I have to get the sacrifice up here."

_'They,' meaning #6,_ OJ supposed with a small shudder.

#2's head vanished out of sight again. OJ squinted into the gloom and waited – he thought he saw a flicker of movement. A rope, maybe? He frowned. Those idiots - that wouldn't help!

Then, in an inhuman burst of speed, #2's pale, naked form came scuttling over the ceiling like a giant, bloated, white cave spider. Wide eyes and white limbs jackknifing over the mottled lush of green, stabbing bone needles tattooing a crime against nature; fluid, mechanical movements all wrong, like some kind of Berdanistic succubus charging at him from out of the black...

"Goodness me," said #2, dropping from the ceiling with an artful little skin-the-cat maneuver. He hit the ground with a wet slop, bare feet hitting the spongy ground as easily as if he did this every day, and slid a dainty finger into his ear, wincing. "There's no need to _scream_ like that."

"Gyaaah," panted OJ, clutching his heart. "_Gyaaaah!_"

#2 sighed one of those ragged sighs of long-suffering and stomped over to Neku the bunny queen, pulling him out of the creeper nest like it were as simple as peeling off an old, dried-up scab. "_Really_." He padded over through the phlegmatic mush, cradling the unconscious boy around the waist with one arm, and then in a flash of white skin and black lace he had slithered back up the wall, as if it were nothing. It probably was.

Well, okay.

OJ pried the rubbery creepers off his wrists and ankles and hauled himself up the steep incline, nowhere near as quickly as any of the Joshes. His injured foot kept wailing in protest – it was like blood-red sirens of pain were exploding in the ball of his foot, sirens that caused his knee to buckle and his fingers to slacken, trembling. This was mildly inconvenient for him, being halfway up a slippery, rubbery incline that might as well have been a rock wall made of rubber hoses slathered in bacon grease.

Eventually, though, OJ tumbled over the lip of the rubber grease hose wall and went slip-sliding down the rest of the way – another incline, this time heading down – only to come spilling out into a sort of secret room. It was a completely natural hollow, it looked like; green lush rose from the depths below and flowed over chunks of rubble like a mockery of waterfalls. The rubble looked suspiciously darker than what OJ knew of 104's building materials, but he didn't question it, nor did he question the vaguely-familiar carvings decorating the flat sides.

The only really remarkable thing about the vine-covered room was the center – there was some kind of platform there, a large chunk of that rubble, but it had not been so much as touched by the vines. On this platform crouched the Joshes, huddled around some kind of firepit that had been erected from the smashed bits of cinder blocks and the odd chunk of brick. The firepit was covered in shittily-drawn symbols, etched with chalk, and the orange flames inside it crackled and glowed.

OJ peeled himself off the slimy, sweet-smelling plant flesh and hurried over to the platform, unable to bear the slippery vines and the altogether-too-eager creepers tugging at his clothes a second longer. He needed #4 and #3's combined help to pull him aboard, though – his skin was just too slick with plant scum.

"Oh, dear," fussed #4, a motherly look coming over his features. "You're dripping wet."

"Uh-huh," said OJ, trying to scrub the foul slime out of his mouth. It tasted like bitter soap and grass, mixed with liberal amounts of snot, but it was the consistency of egg drop soup.

#2 was naked because he was being cleaned up by #4. The rest of the pack had already been fixed up nicely, dolled up in the High Clergy robes and gowns and jewels – which were actually cut-up beach towels, bedsheets, and various shiny scraps of trash, respectively. Somehow – maybe it was their air of certified confidence, or how they all seemed so comfortable with the giant plant surrounding and enveloping them all – somehow, they actually made the salvaged garbage look like true, sacred ornamentation.

#6 especially; he looked like he was a lord of some kind of kingdom. His bedsheet had been trimmed and embroidered with hints of gold thread and rhinestones, and his shining, platinum hair was almost more ceremonial roses than keratin. His face had been painted – three concentric circle eyes, crudely drawn, adorning his cheeks and forehead - with a red color that looked suspiciously like it would have been more at home in some poor creature's veins. Kneeling delicately before the glowing firepit in his gold-tainted bedsheet-gown, hands folded daintily over one knee with his back straight and poised, he looked almost like a tribal princess.

They all were very clean, in comparison to the gungy boy fidgeting in front of them. Well, to his credit, he hadn't lost his hair-rose yet, but that was also kind of because it was gripping his scalp somehow.

Looking at all the scrubbed, freshly-decorated faces, OJ got a sinking feeling. They were gonna "wash" him again, weren't they.

Yes. Yes, they were.

As soon as #2 was finished washing his feet in a small water basin, they all but tackled OJ, ripping his clothes off (again) and dunking him face-first in the water (again). He burbled and choked and made angry spitting noises, since the Joshes seemed to think less "Let's let him come up for air once in a while" and more "HOW HARD CAN WE BASH HIS FACE INTO THIS THING," but it didn't really help his situation much.

* * *

Nearby, laying on the ground behind #6 (he had remained out of the bathtub brawl, since he preferred to stay in mint-condition until the ceremony began) were our protagonists, who were still out cold. Well, fifty per-cent of them were. Neku had been whacked on the head a few too many times, and his headache had reached coma-splitting proportions. He cracked one eye open as he lay, cheek pressed on the cold floor, slime crusting his lids mostly shut. His vision was bleary and everything swam before his eyes, pulsing to the red throb of his poor skull.

Where was he?

He saw orange, orange light – he saw a tumbling bedsheet. He saw a bunch of gowned Joshuas kicking around a naked one. Who was _really _naked. As in, they had not skipped the sausage option on this sub, no sir.

Neku thought it was bizarre. Was he dreaming? If so, why was he dreaming about Joshua and Joshua giving Joshua a sponge bath with the aid of Joshua and Joshua while Joshua's Legs sat there and watched? That seemed a little like a Freudian Punch to the Face, didn't it? Just a _tad_ over-the-top?

The fact that his thoughts immediately jumped to 'good galloping gods of nature, this is awfully out of character for me' meant that he _probably_ wasn't dreaming. You usually don't break the fourth wall in your sleep...er, unconsciousness.

So, then, if he wasn't dreaming...

What the hell was going on?

His head hurt too much to really think. The poor boy groaned softly, prompting #6 to kick him in the forehead rather hard.

The rush of hot, unfeeling blackness swept the headache – and, more importantly, the mental image of "Joshua and Joshua giving Joshua a sponge bath with the aid of Joshua and Joshua while Joshua's legs watched" - away like a cobweb, and for that it was almost welcome.

* * *

Outside of 104, something was happening.

The change was subtle at first. Like something had shifted in the atmosphere – like the metallic smell of the air before an approaching rain storm. But gradually, the sensation built; a strange electricity charged the air, rippling out from somewhere underground and spreading out to rack this Shibuya like a massive golden shockwave. A frenetic agitation rose from the ground, slow and slightly sluggish, like cicadas crawling out from their seven-year slumber. The very air itched and burned**.**

Slowly, every rose in Shibuya turned the color of a dandelion in bloom, a sunflower, a daffodil. A wave of scarlet-turned-yellow blooms spread out from 104 until not a single red rose remained in the entire city.

The air itched with feral energy. As if something had awoken.

Something terrible and great.

And hungry.

Very, very hungry.

The various Josh clones scattered around Shibuya – whether they were derping it up in Dogenzaka, milling around inside Molco, skipping past Shibu-Q Heads – felt the energy hit them, piercing their skin like thorns. They froze up and looked around, checking the roses. Seeing they had changed color, they looked at each other, slightly confused. But they nodded, and headed off in the direction of 104. Robotic brains are not the type to question things.

But they can still complain.

"I thought it wasn't due until tomorrow," one whined.

"I don't have my tithe ready!" wailed a particularly infantile one.

"Come along, Neku," tittered a whole bunch of ones.

"Where are we going, guys...?"

"You'll see, tee hee~!"

The streets were suddenly swept clean of Joshuas. They gravitated toward 104 in a mass exodus, like a sluggish whirlpool that dragged all the Nekus along with it. A massive crowd gathered at the doors, a crowd that was more samefaced than the most arduously cheap Shojo comic book. They clamored at the doors, chattering bitchily amongst themselves, irritably yanking their Nekus behind them like they were annoying lapdogs.

They waited.

* * *

"Don't be such a Debbie Downer," Twoey cooed.

"You look pretty, heehee..."

OJ gnashed his teeth and massaged his aching general person. "You are not very _gentle_ creatures, are you?"

The Joshes' eyes glittered. "Hee hee hee..."

OJ was now prettied up significantly, his hair brushed until it looked like it belonged on some kind of silvery unicorn ghost spirit of mist. It kind of foofed up around the edges, curling excitedly, as if it hadn't been this clean and shiny in a long time. It probably hadn't, but OJ was still of the opinion that it was still exactly the color of dryer lint. Only it was shiny and soft, and it generated the hopeless urge to reach out and _ruffle it_ in all of the passerby. His rose had been straightened out, and every so often he'd feel a dull throb of pain emanating from the florid thing. They had decorated him with his own set of bedsheets, and a fluffy white towel to be worn like a shawl; in addition, they had covered him in a ton of shiny garbage. Even as they ripped off the old and dingy artfacts from his slime-slicked shirt, OJ clung vehemently to his poptab necklace – it had kind of grown on him.

He looked exactly like one of them. ...Well, not that he didn't already, but now he was practically indistinguishable.

Apparently his tasks had all been completed. Nobody wanted to entrust a defective unit with anything overtly important, sothe pack pretty much pointed at a corner and told him to sit there until the ceremony began. OJ was only too happy to oblige; he'd had enough plant slime for one day.

Sitting on the edge of the rubble platform, OJ could hear #6 and #2 preparing the sacrifices. They had taken some of Pamela's thornier vines and bound Neku and Joshua from shoulder to knee, until the two looked somewhat like green mummies. Then, they had wreathed Neku with a crown of pink roses and carelessly shoved a crown of black thorns on Joshua's fluffy head, so that it practically pinned the boy Composer's hair to his eyes. At least it kept with the whole Jesus metaphor thing. Personally, OJ couldn't believe they were still unconscious – that is, until he saw #6 literally bitch-slap them with a crack like a whip whenever they began to stir.

OJ winced and played with his burned fingers, feeling a thick sludge of hot guilt bubbling somewhere in the base of his intesti—his _stomach_. Those two guys had only ever been nice to him, after all...well, the Josh was just insufferable, but that was to be expected.

_No_, OJ told himself sternly, clenching his jaw like a conflicted anti-hero might. _No. It's too bad for them, but it can't be helped. You have to live, you _have_ to live, so you can contact Mr. H somehow and get him to bring Neku back. Then you can go home. It's your life - it's Neku's life - in return for theirs. It's not fair, but it has to be this way. _The bereft little boy nodded to himself, smoothing out his bedsheet. The best thing about trying to talk yourself into being a moron is that it usually works.

"Ah," said #5 suddenly, pointing at #4's hair-rose. It was golden.

#4 grinned nastily. "O-ho, I see. It's time to begin."

The Joshes rose almost as one and stepped lightly off the platform. OJ quickly got up and joined them, in their sick little procession. #2 held Joshua, one hand wound tightly in his ponytail and the other slung sloppily around the boy's waist, while #3 cradled poor Neku in his white arms. #5 had his clipboard, and #6 was walking very closely behind OJ, just in case he decided to make a break for it. Not that OJ could have, if he wanted to – the hole they had used to enter the chamber had sealed up.

OJ realized that there was no other way out of the vine-covered platform room, and was about to comment on it, and then he saw the vines wriggle and slither, bending apart, forming a tight, dark tunnel that flexed and quivered as if breathing. OJ clamped his mouth shut and decided to never question anything again. Ever.

The Joshes and OJ marched through the dark little space, five-sixths of them not minding the cold slime as it dripped and sloshed around the rubbery, ropy walls. They emerged into the main space of 104 – the part that had been completely swallowed by vines. Golden light filtered through the hole in the roof. Coral petals swum in the golden air. Nothing had changed.

And yet, something had. There was a tenseness in the atmosphere, a stiff, cramping anxiety OJ was not used to. He clutched at his towel and walked forward in time with the others, fingering his poptab necklace worriedly.

Like a vegetative cathedral, the central floorspace of 104 loomed overhead into golden-edged dullness, making OJ feel like a tiny, wriggling parasite scooting around in a vast organ. It was not a pleasant feeling. They stood now on a hillock of the tendril-covered meat, something like a crescent-shaped the front was an ambling decline into the main floorspace, all covered with mottled, ropey, veiny vines and oddly-human shaped lumps. Behind them was a deep pit, a pit that oozed and rumbled faintly.

OJ peeked over the edge nervously. It plunged deep, about ten or fifteen feet down, before coming to a blunt end. It oozed with white, translucent slime, quivering and heaving, rippling just below the veined surface, as if anticipating something delicious. Vines that covered the walls twisted downward in a spiral-like fashion, as if being sucked down a giant drain, except for one spot where it looked like a ladder had been left to be devoured by the creepers. The base of the imposing pit looked vaguely like a giant sphincter or something. He wrinkled his nose at the sheer grossness of that mental image and elected to not look at the pit any longer than was absolutely necessary.

#3 gently laid Neku down on the vine-covered ledge, and #2 dumped Joshua down next to him. #6 made a hand signal, and #2-3 nodded in sync – then, they ran to the official entrance, so quickly and fluidly the eye could barely process it. Like hummingbirds, like twitching rats, they sprinted to the doors and opened them.

Joshes poured in by the gazillions, it seemed. As if a floodgate had been opened – assuming the flood itself had been turned into vanilla pudding sometime prior. A sea of bluish shirts and dull blonde hair, violet eyes and dark denim jeans filled the womb-like interior of 104, spilling over every rise and cresting over every lump in the carpet of vines, packing tightly into every available nook and cranny. There were Nekus, too, and they stood out like brilliant orange orchids in a field of fluffy dandelions, but still they were outnumbered by at least two to one.

After the last Joshua had come inside, huffing and panting and fabricating lies about being stuck in rush hour traffic, 2 and 3 closed the doors and stood back. OJ saw a swathe of green vines slip out from its place in the wall and gently bar the door. A cautious glance behind him revealed that the tunnel from earlier had been sealed up, as well.

OJ felt goosebumps prickle his neck, regardless of the stifling humidity. They were trapped. Well, _he_ was. But not for long; soon, soon he could run away and just be rid of all this, soon he would be free...

The green, moist air blanketed the assembly like a thick fog, charged with heat and energy. The sole shaft of golden-glass sunlight spilled over the vines and washed over everything, turning all a sickly shade of yellow-green. The energy in the room was almost palpable – a grisly golden feeling that itched and bubbled in the back of the brain.

OJ kept expecting #6 to raise his arms and address the crowd, but he did not. The clone just stood there, waiting, and he made no visible indication that he would speak anytime soon. The crowd below grew restless - that ugly energy, rising, rearing like an oily serpent. Like a static in the air, sparks jumping from head to cloudy head, until OJ half expected a lightning bolt to whip-crack the air and burn it dry. Still, the clone did not move.

When the agitation seething and writhing in the masses before them grew halfway to a frenzy, the clone did not move.

When the irritated energy was a very real presence in the room itself, a hulking golden beast with a skin that crawled with fire ants, the clone did not move.

When it seemed like total chaos was just a few seconds from breaking loose – then, only then did Joshua #6 raise his hand.

"Be still," he said, in a voice like warm honey. "Be still, my brethren. Close your eyes." He lifted his arms. "Can you feel her? She is here with us."

A ripple of discontented murmurs swept through the crowd below. OJ fidgeted uncomfortably, sneaking a guilty glance at the two tied-up protagonists.

So #6 spread his arms wide and spoke loudly and clearly, like some kind of father. "She is here - not only in the soft flesh that carpets this holy ground, not only in the sacred arms that wreathe this sanctum in their protective, loving embrace - but also in the air, in the sky, in each of us. She fills this place, with Her sacred scent; She enshrouds us in her golden glory. Feel Her! Can you not feel Her sweet breath surrounding you? She cradles us in her verdant Heart, She holds us close with an all-consuming love so great and pure it alone shields us from the Corrosion outside of our City. We are Her sacred children, and we are loved by her. Loved!"

OJ took a disgusted sniff of the grandma-flavored air. _Big, fat, hairy deal. _

_...Ohh, I'm in no position to be a critic, am I?_

The congregation of Josh clones seemed to be settled down by these words, however. Josh #6 got a serene look on his face and continued. "Yes, She is here. Fear not, worry not. We stand now as close to Her as we can. Can you feel Her pulse? Her throb and ebb? The sweet milk that flows through Her veins, caressed by xylem and phloem in a feather-light dance? Can you feel Her sacred heartbeat, can you feel Her standing here? She is standing over us, right now. She stands over us, among us. She holds Her arms out in a holy arc, welcoming us home. She is our Mother, our Lady, our Rose Maiden. Can you feel Her golden love energy filling you, tickling your skin receptors?"

It felt like a thousand tiny spiders were skittering over OJ's arms. Itchy and frightening. According to OJ Webster, that was_ not_ the definition of "love energy," let me tell you.

#2-5 chimed in unison: "She is here, She is here with us. Feel Her. Feel Her love, Her golden embrace. She loves you. She loves us. We love Her. She is our Mother. We love Her."

The crowd cooed and tittered softly, like an assembly of quails.

_So that..."feeling" is Pamela?_ OJ crinkled his nose. _She doesn't seem very loving to me, actually, but – well, she's a plant._

#6 opened his glassy violet eyes slowly, fluttering his eyelashes demurely out of habit. "Our Mother protects us. Our Mother loves us. Our Mother enchants the lambs with her gentle breath, kissing them into submission so that we may take them for ourselves. Our Mother cares for us, our Mother provides for us." He gestured grandly. "And in return? We leave her golden fields to live as mortals in this city. We have left Her Heart, we have left Her.

"There is no shame to being a Tithe. There is no consequence." #6 laid his hands on the spot where his heart ought to be. "By surrendering your mortality to your Mother, you return to the Heart. You return to Her. And in doing so, any defectiveness is purged – cleansed from your being – simply by being with her."

"It is not a thing to fear. If anything, it is an honor. A holy privilege," chorused the Joshes.

"There is no need to beware, O chosen ones. You will soon be with Her forever." #6 smiled his warmest smile. "Now, let us wake Her from her holy slumber. Follow my lead."

_Another perfectly fine catchphrase ruined by my evil septillionuplet-twin,_ OJ thought miserably. _Now I have to think up a new thing for Fusion. Ugh. On top of everything else that creep took away from me... _

As the High Clergy turned as one to face the pit behind them, the entire chamber was slowly filled with the soft, melodious sound of three hundred nails being dragged down a chalkboard. The Josh clones had all begun to sing in their terrible perma-pubescent voices. OJ reluctantly joined in, his voice just as awful as the rest of them. He resolved to get some singing lessons if he returned home. _When_ he returned home.

"_Ring around the rosie/a pocket full of posies;/ashes, ashes/we all fall down..._" The chant filled the air like the soft, mellifluous trills of a thousand choirs of songbirds being stabbed to death.

Yeah, singing lessons were _definitely_ needed.

"_Ring around the rosie/a pocket full of posies;/ashes, ashes/we all fall down._" Spiraling upward in an off-key crescendo, it engulfed the interior of 104 like some kind of deadly miasma, expanding into every corner, rising in volume until the vines began to tremble in time. The High Clergy raised their arms again and again, as if drawing the energy from the crowd and letting it rise into the air.

Around this time, OJ realized that the vines were not trembling on account of the song; they were _moving_.

"_Ring around the rosie/a pocket full of posies;/ashes, ashes/we all fall down._" The hideous song rose in volume, becoming more full-bodied with every note. It grew in energy, in tempo, becoming ever more discordant as the Josh clones let the golden agitation fuel their ritual wailing.

The vines were definitely moving, yes. Slithering and writhing over each other like a horde of slimy, scummy snakes. OJ nearly Tripped, but this story isn't called _Other_Joshua Trips, so he did not. He did, however, notice that the pit before him was...rumbling.

Rumbling, pitching and heaving, twitching and quivering like a sensitive, slime-covered valve, slowly widening and _opening_...

"_Ring around the rosie/a pocket full of posies;/ashes, ashes/we all FALL DOWN!_"

The Josh clones' song could no longer be described as such. It had lost all meter and become nothing more than a cacophony of sadistic screams. The bloodcurdling cries of hawks, of vultures, of scavenging things and opportunistic demons swooping in for the kill. The Joshes seemed to have become possessed by the chant until they had become one voice, one ethereal caterwaul that crackled and seethed with the hateful golden force that had eaten their minds. Like an eldritch howl from beyond the void, it cracked against your eardrums and split your mind, throbbing against your eyes until you wanted to break down and vanish into the cyclone of noise.

With an enormous wet sound (_shllUURGHK_), the pit opened up, segmenting up into a ring of triangular flaps and twisting back into a funnel-shape. At the base of this funnel was a hole, one that revealed a drop down into dull-green blackness from which a hideous smell issued forth. It was the smell of burning flesh and bone salt, the smell of saliva and the smell of acid.

It hissed out from the opened hole like a poisonous gas, billowing out into the air and filling the chamber with the smell of bog death. OJ coughed and gagged, his mind filled with images of mangled corpses rotting in a pool of scummy water. Covered in intestines, of course. Bloated white ones. Oh, and flies too. Lots of flies. Oh, yeah, and maggots. Lots of maggots. Oh, and-

"_Will you shut up you asshole I'm going to puke_," OJ wheezed, but the 'voice in his head' couldn't hear him over the chanting.

Meanwhile, oblivious to OJ's little crisis, Joshua #6 had a maniacal grin on his face. "Pamela," he murmured at first, but his voice quickly grew into a whiny bellow. "We bring You these humble offerings, these Tithes, that You may accept them into Your heart once again and grow strong! Pamela! Pamela! _Purge these deviants of their sin! Cleanse them of their pain! _Bring them back into Your golden presence and _heal them with Your love! _Pamela! O, Pamela!"

"_Ring around the rosie/we offer you these posies;/Eat their ashes/watch them_ FALL DOWN!"

OJ stopped feeling nauseous, primarily because his stomach felt like it had fallen down twenty stories and splattered on the ground with a dull _thwap_ of dread. He stopped chanting, voice hoarse – when had he started screaming like the rest of them? - and shot a frightened glance at the two boys laying bound on the seething ridge of vines. Realizing that he was practically smack in the middle of Joshua #6's peripheral vision, he quickly looked away, but it was no use.

#6 had seen, and his eyes sparkled maliciously. He lowered his arms and the frenzied chanting suddenly ceased, leaving a hot and sticky silence. The vines underfoot stopped writhing. The energy stopped pounding the air. Everything was still.

"Neophyte," he called. It took OJ a second to realize he was the neophyte in question, since #6 had never called him anything but "you" and various hackneyed pet names. "Neophyte, come to me."

#4 and #3 carefully balanced the two incapacitated protagonists so they were "standing" on their feet while OJ sheepishly stumbled over to the packleader's side, getting that uncomfortable feeling in his guts again. He limped up to #6 with a submissive look of defeat oozing out of his face.

Imagine the downtrodden little boy's surprise when #6 bowed to him. "Neophyte. Will you do the honors?"

The surprise was swiftly replaced with horrible, fearful foreboding. OJ glanced around, but – all the other High Clergy Joshes were bowing and slowly backing away, with mock reverence. They just – they just enjoyed watching him suffer, was that it? OJ felt a feeling of black despair bloom in his depths, and he looked guiltily at the two would-be sacrifices bound by the thorny vines.

_Nothing. Nothing matters, as long as I get home. Nothing matters, as long as I get home._ That phrase rattled around in his head, a desperate mantra. He stepped forward.

Neku looked so peaceful, with his not-exactly-sleeping face framed by pleasingly-pink roses. His orange hair was sticking to his cheeks in places, and his mini top hat had been dented, but overall he looked almost pristine, like an enchanted Lapin Angelique princess or something dumb like that. OJ crinkled his nose in disgust. Like Sleeping Bunny. The look didn't suit the Neku he had known, admired and ultimately killed. Other Neku was a badass. This Neku was probably a badass too, in some way – they were the same person after all, so it made sense. And badasses shouldn't die with flowers on their head. That's_ girly_.

OJ gently lifted the roses from Neku's head, taking the crown in his trembling hands with care. He sighed with regret. "I'm sorry, Neku," he murmured, and pushed our protagonist off the ridge.

He didn't watch as the boy fell backwards into the pit; he didn't watch as the small, pale form tumbled around and around and eventually slid down through the hole, falling down an unmeasurable distance before landing with a faint splash and a carbonated hiss. He _couldn't_ watch. He just couldn't.

Instead, OJ walked over to where our Joshua was propped up. He looked at the face that had caused him so much grief – and watched, disbelieving, as the eyes fluttered open groggily. Of all the times to wake up...

"Ugh, my _head_..." Our Joshua blinked blearily and tried to rub his eyes awake, but couldn't – he was bound. He struggled for a second, confused – winced, as the thorns cut into his soft flesh. He looked up suddenly, as if seeing OJ for the first time. "Orange Juice boy," he said, like a mental patient who could only speak in nouns. "Other guy. What..."

His eyes immediately snapped down to the vines holding him in place.

"You," he said quickly. Joshua disapproving-mothered OJ at maximum intensity. "Don't just stand there, gawping like an idiot. Help me. Why are all these clones here? Where am I? Wait, did _you_ tie me up?"

OJ's jaw tightened.

"Hello in there! Anybody home?" He got a disgusted look on his face. "Why are you crying...?"

As if about to speak, OJ opened his mouth - and then he closed it, his words hitching and deflating on dead breath. A choking lump gathered in his throat.

What could he say? What could he possibly say for himself?

Our Joshua began to struggle again, never mind the thorns. "Untie me _this instant_, you blubbering ninny!"

His fierce writhing around caused him to rock backward – he would have plummeted into the pit right then and there, if OJ hadn't reached out and caught him at the last second. The thorns pricked OJ's hand and drew warm, scarlet blood – but the boy didn't care. He shook his head lamely at our Joshua, unable to speak.

"Thank you, good sir. I almost fell over and _whacked my head_," our Joshua quipped, his tone loaded with such venom that it could have killed a black mamba with a single syllable. "You owe me a new skull, you douche!"

OJ whispered something hoarsely.

Our Joshua squinted. "Pardon?"

"I'm sorry," OJ choked out.

And he let go.

* * *

**AN:** 2x CLIFFHANGER COMBO

So our Neku and Josh fell into the sphincter pitmouth of Pamela the heinous! What will happen next! Graphic descriptions of their bubbly death in the _gray gutacid_? PROBABLY SO, but MAYBE NOT!

And I am also infamously bland so I have nothing else to tell you people right now.


	18. In which Everybody Gets Naked

**_JOSHUA TRIPS_**

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: IN WHICH NEKU IS NAKED AND JOSHUA IS APATHETIC ABOUT IT (AS IS OJ BUT THE TITLES DON'T USUALLY TALK ABOUT HIM)

The Story So Far: Joshua and Neku just got tossed into a pit of acid! Gee there is pretty much no way they could survive that! Wow! What is even happening in this fanfic!

Of Note In This Chapter: Joshua, Neku, and OJ form a society based on degrees of nudity.

Rating: T

* * *

OJ watched the rest of the Tithes march up to the altar and plunge into the gaping pit, one by one, with only a vague awareness. They all became a blur, after a while. They would come trudging up the slope of vines in a solemn line, guided by #3 and #2 – most were Joshes, but every Neku offered himself up as well – and they would walk up to #6, who would kiss their forehead sweetly and then shove them down into the funnel in a rather brusque fashion. They would hit the sides of the funnel and tumble down the slippery sides, unwittingly lubricating themselves with the oozing slime as they did so – and then they would slip down through the glistening, quivering throat and plummet into oblivion. Hideous screams and ecstatic wails rose from the void – Joshes screaming in agony and delight as they melted away, delirious, dizzy with eagerness to see their Mother in person; Nekus howling in pure terror, as they had not voluntarily signed up for this, uh, "Tithing" thing. The whole "going back to Pamela" schtick was news to them, but what choice did they have?

Among the Tithes was a clone by the moniker of N99. He plunged into the pit at an odd angle and hit the slimy edge of the drop-hole, realized he was burning, and with an unearthly shriek tumbled down into the darkness. Faint splashes were heard, indicating that the black hole yawning at the base of the pit must lead to some kind of deep, waterlogged chamber. Judging by the incessant, agonized shrieking, three things were possible – either A) the pit was full of some kind of acid, B) the Joshes were _reeeally bad _swimmers, or C) both.

The evil stench and the horrible sounds that arose from the pit were _unbearable_. OJ couldn't think anymore, he couldn't be bothered to really watch the proceedings as they happened around him. The smell and the screams wrapped him in a painful haze of guilt, a fog of needles through which he could not see. There was no point in thinking. There was nothing to think about.

No thought could distract him from the reality of his crime, and so he let himself wallow in numb, empty despair.

When the last Tithe had been shoved over the edge, and the amount of clones in the room had been nearly halved, the Joshes sang a reprise of "Ring Around The Rosie." The only real difference was that they didn't burst into death metal screaming at the end this time – they actually tried to make it sound good. It most definitely didn't, but it's the thought that counts.

At some point, what remained of the congregation left the building, chattering happily. OJ didn't care. He didn't really care about anything anymore.

Standing there in his private melancholy, he had shut his eyes to everything, seeing nothing but his own sorrows. It was no surprise that he failed to notice the Joshes slowly gathering around him. "Neophyte," said #6. "You did well."

OJ looked up after a minute, blinking dully. "Huh?"

"You did well," #6 repeated, smiling blandly. His eyes were shining again. "You followed our orders perfectly, despite your defect. We really appreciate it."

The Joshes murmured their agreement.

OJ sighed. "...Okay. Good to know. I guess."

"However, it is Pamela's will that you are returned to her anyway."

"...What?"

The Joshes' eyes glittered as they all spoke at the same time, in unison. "All defectives are to be brought back into the Heart of Pamela."

"It is the only way to cure them." Joshua #6 nodded, smug. "You'll finally be free of the impurities that plague you. By the grace of the Mother alone - cured, completely, of your defects."

"I don't need to b-be cured!" OJ sputtered. "We had a deal...you said you'd let me go..."

"Did I ever say where I'd 'let you go' _to?_" Josh #6 smirked. "To the Heart of the Mother, that's where."

"B-But...you said..."

"I said this, I said that. I love you. I hate you. Words mean nothing, Neophyte." He stretched languidly. "You could say I twisted the meaning of my promise, but that would be an impossibility given that the promise itself had no weight to begin with."

The boy wrung his hands, strangely calm despite the situation. This numbness encroached deeper to his core, though - like the skin of a soap bubble, about to burst and let a hot wave of angry emotions flood the air from his lungs. "...You were planning this from the start, then?"

"No, I was actually planning to throw you a surprise party. This is a last minute decision." #6 gave OJ a withering look. "What do you _think?_"

OJ clenched his fists, hot tears prickling at his eyes, the injustice of it all twisting his throat shut. His knees quivered beneath him. "It's not _fair_..."

"Life's not fair," said #6, bored. "Quit whining, it's not becoming."

"But...you can't..." OJ whispered hoarsely. "You-"

"That's enough. Talking to you makes my processors rot." #6 waved his hand dismissively, as if flicking away a particularly pesky insect. "Throw him."

OJ didn't struggle when the clones grabbed him by the arms and legs. He didn't fight back, because what good would it do? Maybe if he went out in a blaze of glory, he could have taken one or two of the Josh clones out with him.

But instead, he just gave up. They flung him easily into the pit.

He whistled through the air for a second, and then he hit the sloping wall of vines hard. The breath was wrenched from his lungs with a sharp crack of pain, and for an instant OJ felt completely deflated, empty, dead, a falling corpse staring up through red-flecked vision. The Joshes waved at him, smiling cheerily.

Their synchronized faces were yanked out of his eyesight as gravity grabbed him by the hair and dragged him downward, tumbling over slimy, rubbery vines, landing painfully on his wrist once or twice, over and over, whacking his head on the vineflesh, until suddenly there was nothing there to whack. An absence loomed below his head – out of instinct, OJ's hands shot out and became talons, clawing desperately at the green, the verdant tendrils – but they were oozing torrents of goo, and OJ might as well have tried to grab a lifeline made out of saliva.

OJ fell. He slipped easily through the hole head-first, fingers grasping at the lip of green before falling. Plummeting down into the hot black and the bog death, he saw the golden circle of light above him shrink into nothing, and all was dark.

And then he hit the graywater.

It slapped him hard, but since he had fallen head-first it didn't hurt as much as it could have. Warm slime swallowed his hair and filled his mouth and nose, consuming the rest of him shortly after. He could hear the billowing sounds of bubbles rushing against his submerged ears, stirring his drowning bedsheet-robes, jerking his poptab necklace upwards until it was cutting against his neck.

Then the initial rush subsided and OJ, swallowed by slime, hit the silty bottom with a dull thud. His speed had been softened somewhat by the water, but it still hurt.

Everything was black and wet and airless, a strange, dull ringing flooding the graywater and undulating against his skull. OJ's first instinct was to swim up, up, because his mouth was clogged with bitter slime and his breath was choked. He had never really been the greatest swimmer, but now he kicked out and thrashed, struggling upward.

His ceremonial garb anchored him down like a thousand pound weight, though, and it was clear that he was either going to shed it or die. He struggled around, trying to break free of the heavy bedsheet, but it caught against his arms and bound him tightly. He was trapped.

By now, OJ's lungs were burning. His skin felt oddly warm, too, and his heart hammered in his chest. He didn't _want_ to die. His skin grew warmer and warmer until it was practically burning.

Suddenly, he realized that it wasn't his skin that was burning – _it was the bedsheet_. It bubbled and burned and hissed, now, and holes were eaten away, and entire clumps shed off into the water and dissolved into percolating foam. It was not exactly comfortable, but he was suddenly lighter.

Engulfed in a column of heat and bubbles, OJ stuggled upwards – and the force of the rising torrent pushed him along ever so slightly.

His head, at long last, broke through the skin of the slimy liquid with a painful gasp. OJ gulped down sharp knives of breath, kicking frantically. Struggling through the thick, gooey graywater in a leftward direction, OJ eventually managed to find the wall of the chamber, a mat of creepers that sloped upward in a fairly steep fashion. The boy hauled himself out of the goo, mucous dripping off his now-bare back in pallid, grayish globs.

Not that he could see any of it. The chamber was pitch black, given that the mouth OJ had fallen through was now closed. It was black and very quiet.

OJ arranged himself into a sitting position and frisked himself curiously with his slimy hands, discovering that all of his clothes were gone except his underwear, his socks, and his shoes. It seemed a rather odd triad.

At least he wasn't cold. The chamber was hot and humid, the hideous smell of death and bitter grass like a stifling woolen blanket in itself. OJ drew his knees up to his chest and huddled there, anyway. He was completely alone, now; there was no more chance of escape. The slime sang against his skin, humming dully.

_The other two are definitely dead_, he thought, breathing stiffly in the cramping darkness. The graywater sloshed against the walls of the pit, rocking gently in the remnants of his struggle. _This slime must be acid or something._

Although, he wasn't quite sure why ninety-five per-cent of his clothes had burned off while his skin had stayed perfectly intact. And his underwear. Convenient as it was, it didn't matter, anyway – he'd just die slowly of starvation instead.

OJ buried his face in his knees and just sat there, rocking gently. Despair coaxed a salty tear to poke curiously at his eye corner, but he didn't bother turning on the waterworks. Crying was pointless.

Everything was pointless.

* * *

Suddenly, the cavern was illuminated by dim blue light.

OJ looked up. _Huh?_

For the first time, he could see his new prison fairly well. Etched in dull, bluish color, the cavern appeared like a teal web of nerves, twisted into an oblong shape. The walls sloped sharply and vertically until about halfway up, at which point they began to curve inward again. In other words, the chamber was shaped like a (vaguely anorexic) football propped up on one end. The entire base of the thing was flooded with gray, rippling slime – in the soft light, it looked vaguely like a pool of blue mercury. Under OJ's rump, the walls gently twitched and convulsed, as if reacting nervously to the icy glow.

The source of the glow poked his head out from behind a fold in the wall of vines across the graywater. His dull gray-violet eyes narrowed when they saw OJ.

"_Well_," said our Joshua, tutting loudly. "Look what the cat dragged in."

OJ's eyes widened and his heart thumped painfully, but not in a romantic way. That would be extremely narcissistic. "You're alive!"

"Actually, I'm undead," drawled Joshua, lifting his finger into the air to better see by it. At the end of his finger glowed a small, whitish light.

_Oh, he must be the Composer, then_, OJ thought. "You must be the Composer, then."

"Nah, I'm just a mild-mannered accountant."

OJ sighed. "...Can I come over there?"

Joshua shrugged lazily. "Why not. But be careful, Neku's au naturale."

OJ slid into the graywater and kind of floundered over, as gracefully as a wimpy kid who had never taken a swimming class. Which he was.

Once he was across the pool, OJ clambered onto the small shore of twisted vines, hauled himself to his feet, and stood face to face with his alternate self. Our Joshua looked pretty strange to OJ – his scruchie and shirt had evidently burned away, leaving his hair long and wet and crusted onto his face, clinging to his bare white shoulders and dripping into his eyes and all that. Shirtless and long-haired, he looked kind of like Conan the barbarian - if Conan had been played by Justin Bieber rather than Arnold Schwarzenegger, that is.

OJ and our Joshua stared dumbly at each other for a minute. Then our Joshua shoved him back in.

"That's for pushing me," explained our protagonist as he helped a spluttering OJ struggle out of the slime.

"J-jerk," coughed out OJ.

Our Joshua shrugged and waved his finger around lazily, the tip of which emitted a bright blue-white flame – the source of the light. "Your prim, ladylike insults are little more than laughable amusements to me. Don't look at me like that – like you think you're getting to me in some deep crevice. What's that? Oh, you know, I've heard a _few_ worse slights in my eternity as a demigod." (An eternity that was only about a year in the running, mind you.) "You're going to have to do better than that."

"An eternity?" OJ barked out a laugh. "An eternity of Composing and you _still _manage to accidentally teleport into THIS parallel world? Ooh, haven't worked out all the kinks yet, have we?" Here, the boy fingered his chin in mock thoughtfulness. "Unless, you know, jumping into the world full of slashy Josh-Neku vore clones was _intentional_..."

Our Joshua arched an eyebrow. "Nice skivvies."

OJ flushed. "Th-that has nothing to do with-"

"Now, if you're _quite _finished flirting with me," Joshua drawled. "there's a little platform up here that I'm using as base camp for the time being. I say 'I' because Neku is not very useful at the moment, and the other one is...well. If you'd be so generous as to grace us with your godly presence at our humble little caucus, I'm sure the general human condition would greatly benefit from-"

"Okay, okay!" OJ huffed and folded his arms across his clammy chest, rolling his eyes skyward almost pleadingly.

Our Joshua nodded and, smirking a little, spun around on his heel and ducked behind the fold in the wall.

It wasn't really a fold, actually – upon closer inspection, it was obvious that another chunk of that black rubble stuff had somehow fallen in here and integrated into the landscape. It looked, perhaps, as if a chunk of the 104 floor had caved in or something, laying on the fleshy walls of the juicy , disgusting pit, until the vines had swallowed it up with their verdant tentacle jaws. A flat, rather squarish platform was created by this, one that jutted out from the sloping wall at an obtuse angle. It was covered in vines, yes, but since the tendrils were draped over dull, shale-colored stone instead of the oozing green plant meat, there was a considerable shortage of slime, and that greatly helped along the process of climbing.

Our Joshua let OJ climb up onto the vine-choked table of stone first, holding his glowing finger aloft like a lantern so that OJ could see the handholds. OJ smiled to himself, despite everything – this small act of courtesy – kindness - on his other self's part reassured him that he truly wasn't a cruel person at heart, and it did so more than any amount of mental pacing ever could. He had been doubting himself ever since the intestine thing – how could he say he was any better, any different from the clones, if he was willing to mutilate and eat his best and only friend's corpse all for a nebulous chance at getting home? If he was willing to kidnap the only two people in this plane that could have been called his kindred spirits and pitch them into a carnivorous pit full of acid, all for a hollow promise?

His behavior sickened him. OJ felt like a monster.

But here was his alternate self, being nice. The Composer, of all people, had enough weighing on his mind to make him corrupt and mean – but not this one.

Really, our Joshua had kind of forgotten to turn his finger off, but it was still nice of him. OJ felt some of the numbing stress lifted from his shoulders, and his foggy head began to clear – right now, he didn't have to hate himself _quite_ so much.

After the seat of OJ's skin-soaked briefs had been hauled over the edge of the platform, our Joshua came up as well. The simple action of scaling a vine-covered wall of rock required a pint or two of Focus Juice, and with most of his brain energy devoted to not falling and snapping his neck, Joshua's finger-light woofed out of existence.

"_Hey_," OJ said from overhead.

"Chillax, bro," said our Joshua, with all the cheer of an in-flight attendant. "The Jesus Binger will be back online shortly."

"...Jesus _Binger?_" OJ sounded vaguely horrified.

"Jesus Beam? Finger? Binger?" Joshua sighed as he knotted his fingers in the creepers and clambered over the edge of the viney stone platform. "If you're trying to imply here that the word 'binger' is a euphemism of 'some kind,' please. _Please_, Orange Juice boy. Nobody takes me seriously already; I shouldn't have to beg _you _for credit, too." He made a soft 'pff' noise. "_Binger...really..._"

"You seem immature enough," said OJ, seriously.

"You do realize that we are the same person," said Joshua, his tone biting. "Do we really need to break out the rubber-and-glue lecture? Do I need to hold your little pudgy baby hand every step of the way and walk you through the concept of parallel worlds? Really? No? Okay, then put your silly schoolyard bitchgames back in your cubby, park your butt down, and get all snuggled up and cozy in your shitty little plastic chair until the bell rings and Joshua-sensei dismisses your pimply cream puff ass for recess."

He sounded kind of edgy at the end.

OJ snorted. "Well. _Excuse_ me if I accidentally chafed against your superiority complex, my dear."

"You have one too by default, hun. Personally, I cannot fathom why you feel _so_ entitled to push my buttons." The black-green air seemed to prickle as a ray of motherly disapproval shot out of Joshua's eye sockets and smacked OJ in the thigh.

"Actually, I_ don't_ think I have a superiority complex. Not really," said OJ lightly, shrugging.

"And that, sweetheart, is _exactly_ why you are intrinsically inferior to me."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not!"

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm _NOT-!_"

A dull groan interrupted their highly philosophical conversation.

"...Are you hungry?" OJ asked, stupidly.

"No, I just had a large breakfast of babies and lug nuts." Joshua smirked invisibly in the dark. "That's just Neku."

"...This is not a good time to be hungry," OJ observed. "Since, you know, there's no food down here..."

A moment of stifling, humid silence passed.

"Well, we'll eat you first." Joshua said dismissively. "Now, as much as I enjoy our little snarkball ping-pong competitions, I have bigger fish to fry."

"Irons in the fire?"

"_So _many irons," Joshua sighed, nobly.

He lit up his finger to illustrate his point. As a sliver-blue disc of revealing light was cast over the platform, OJ made a strangled noise and looked away.

"Oh, come on. Neku isn't that ugly." Joshua smirked in a kind of strained fashion. "Or is it just that he's dredging up squiggly feelings?"

"It's not him, it's-" OJ snuck a glance, clapped a hand over his mouth, and looked away, eyes watering.

Joshua had clearly dragged Neku out of the graywater and dumped him on the platform some time ago. The dyed-ginger boy was completely naked, of course – all of his foofy Lolita threads had melted and bubbled away, leaving little more than the occasional strip of gray foam still sizzling on a nook of exposed flesh. That was approximately _fifty thousand_ yen of the Bunny Realm's finest, completely burnt off by the awfully selective acid. It was _such_ a waste of money, but that's not what OJ was repulsed by.

Heaped on the vine-choked ground next to Neku was a horribly mangled body. The dorsal side seemed relatively normal – white skin, with a few red flecks here and there, maybe a scald mark or two – and at first glance, it didn't look so bad.

But the underside of the body was hideously mauled. The face looked like it had been burned and stripped away slowly. The mouth had been completely melted away, leaving nothing but a ring of dark red blotches that bled directly into the mottled gums. The tissue that had not been turned pink and warped and bloody was gray and black and foaming, bubbling. The chest and thighs were even worse – glistening reddish-pink meat glimmered in the cold light of Joshua's finger; greasy ribbons of fat dangled out from the flayed flesh like wet, bloated streamers. Black, gnarled patterns of veins throbbed beneath barely-paper thin crusts of plasma; dark blood oozed from sticky, boiling holes in the arms. Everywhere the body's wounds bubbled and foamed, emitting barely-audible hissing noises as Pamela's acid ate into the flesh. White ribs pushed out of the frothing chest, creaking faintly with each...breath...

It was alive. The mangled body was alive, and breathing. Its cheeks were wet – not with slime or blood, but with tears.

And the worst part was that it was _him_.

OJ stuffed his knuckles in his mouth and tore his eyes off the grisly sight, the incriminating locks of wavy, dull blonde hair...

"After you pushed me," said our Joshua, who shall be re-named Mr. Exposition if he keeps up with this little trend. "clones started to fall from the hole in the ceiling and hit that heinous gutwater, screaming like suicidal meteors. I thought, 'If one of them hits Neku, he'll get shoved underwater and drown,' and since I can't undo his death in this particular universe, I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and swam us over here." He waved at the platform with his free, not-glowy hand. "It's out of the way. I thought I'd drag Neku up here and keep to the wall until the falling bodies stopped. It worked well, for a while. One of the clones hit the wall funny, you see, and tumbled down onto this particular platform, leaving a hideous stain as he slid down."

OJ glanced at the twitching clone body. The thing had inched over to Neku and was now weakly licking the drool off the incapacitated boy's cheek. "Why are you, um, keeping it here?"

"I was _going_ to kick it into that vile cocktail down there," Joshua said, pointing at the graywater. He then presented OJ with the back of his hand. "But it bit me."

Two black, deep cuts sliced across the Composer's hand, dribbling ectoplasm. OJ winced. "Ouch."

"Yes, it was very..._prompt_ about it, too," our Joshua sniffed, indignant. That indignant sniff communicated the deep calm he had handled the situation with – it seemed to imply that, even mid-way through the process of being bitten and chewed on, he didn't panic or scream or anything. He was _totally_ not freaked out, not even a little. "I need to somehow push it off without getting eaten alive. ...Undead. Whatever."

"Um, it's kinda...licking Neku," OJ observed anxiously. "Maybe we should...throw a shoe at it, or something? Kinda quickly?"

"It's been doing that off and on," Joshua admitted. "But if it was going to eat Neku, I think it _probably_ would have gotten it underway by this point."

OJ looked strained. "I, um, I think we should throw a shoe at it. Really soon. For example, right now."

"What's the rush?"

"Neku's waking up."

Uh-oh.

Joshua and OJ looked at each other and then looked at the clone. The civil thing to do was push the clone off really quickly before Neku really became sober, but...if they did that, wouldn't _they_ become the prime suspects, as far as face-licking was concerned?

And so, the parallel twins wheedled around selfishly in the shadows as Neku slowly percolated up from the black void of uselessness.

* * *

The first thing he noticed was the fact that his lips were being harassed by a wet, probing tendril of some fleshy persuasion. At first he groggily assumed it was one of those soft, squishy vines, poking around his mouth – that didn't explain the faint smell of crusty spam ramen, but whatever. And then his ears came back online, and he could hear the faint ragged breathing next to him. His eyes snapped open and he saw Joshua's face, half-melted and grinning with a hole-filled tongue, nose like the stump of a dripping candle, eyes off-focus and one foaming and too flat, like a leaking balloon -

The hole-riddled tongue slid across Neku's drooly lips again.

Neku thought he might die.

He struck out immediately, shoving the hideous thing off with a strangled cry and jumping to his feet, suddenly quite awake and alert. The half-dissolved body rolled over with a heavy thump, revealing the red and white swell of the bubbling ribcage and the foaming pink slurry of slowly dissolving organs-

He screamed. And then he puked. And then he screamed. And then he backed up and tried to run away, but he was swiftly grabbed on the arm by _another Joshua_ – mouthing something desperately, Neku couldn't understand words right now - he howled and punched that hideous demon spawn in the nose with all of his strength. The waif crumpled to the ground, clutching at his girly face. He whirled around and saw another one and he – just - _snapped_, charging at it like a howling bull and shoving it over the edge of the platform with a wail of rage and anguish. It hit the soupy water below with a _dook!_ noise, and then Neku realized he was naked. And then the light went out, so it didn't matter anyway.

It was suddenly very dark and very quiet.

Neku's heart rate slowed and his vision turned from red to black and silent. The blood rushing through his ears subsided to little more than a dull, aggravated gasp.

Okay, what was going on?

He was standing on a vine-covered, spongy ledge, for certain, overlooking some sort of chartreuse-colored pool. Now that it was dark, he couldn't see the edge anymore, so he decided to back up a few feet.

Where the hell was he? Where were his clothes? Where was Joshua? Where was OJ? What was up with Joshuas, clad in varying degrees of nakedness, surrounding him and _licking his fucking face_ while he was in the buff?

"And that _incredibly shitty _dream! Don't even get me started on that dream!" Neku warned the collective of author and audience.

He got a strange sense of foreboding, one that filled his gooey inner pockets with liquid nitrogen, but physically... he ran a quick diagnostic.

Neku was pleased to discover that he didn't feel any pain, really. Just a heavy, dull throbbing in his head. He felt a little dizzy, too, but that was the bulk of it. He supposed his purity was still intact – thank goodness.

He sat down with a bump and kind of huddled up, uncomfortably slimy. What now? He was all alone.

As the silence grew thinner around him, Neku could hear someone moaning in pain somewhere behind him. Creeping closer.

Neku tried to get to his feet but his arm was grabbed and yanked to a ground, and – before Neku could blast this new assailant from here to Abu Dhabi – a gun was cocked and a cold ring of metal kissed his temple like an old friend that just so happened to be a member of the Italian mafia.

Neku stopped flopping around like a dying seal and became very still.

"Good boy," said Joshua, thickly. There was not a single point in that sentence that was not slathered with gratuitous amounts of gooey, chunky, marinara-flavored Brooklyn Rage, which was impressive since our Joshua was not from Brooklyn. Not even a little.

And it _was_ our Joshua, by the way. You might think he ought to have been knocked out by Neku's meteor punch of death, and you'd be exactly right. Only, the punch had knocked our Joshua so far out that he was back in, kind of like an astronaut punching a satellite only to have it clock them in the back of the head two minutes later.

There was the sound of fumbling around, and the ring of gunmetal shivered against Neku's scalp. Suddenly Neku was illuminated, as if a sadistic spotlight had decided that now was a fine occasion to train him in its icy sights. Neku squinted against the bright light and shouted a little, remembering his dream – he frantically attempted to twist away from Joshua.

"_Aah! Don't look!_"

"Oh, quit it, you baby!" our Joshua griped. "It's old news."

"...Old news what – You were checking me out!" Neku cried, horrified.

"If checking you out means saving you from a watery grave, then sure-"

"You were? _You WERE?_ While I was unconscious? Dude..._dude_..." Neku's countenance cycled through a rapid-fire series of very amusing faces that would have been excellent additions to the scrapbook, if only the circumstances had been a little less serious.

"_Will you take a chill pill already you raving loon_," Joshua spat, not even bothering with commas. "We're fellow men! There's nothing to-"

"THAT IS PART OF THE PROBLEM, JOSHUA." Neku tried in vain to wrench his arm away. "Don't touch me!"

Here he noticed that Joshua's nose was bleeding.

"YAAAAAAAAAGH," he said in an overtly calm and diplomatic manner – it was clear to all that Neku Sakuraba was the unassuming type, the kind of person who always gives people the benefit of the doubt. This was obviously why he had started thrashing around. He wound up accidentally kicking Joshua in the wrist - Joshua yelped, lost his grip – the gun fell to the ground and went off with a hideous, ear-ripping _BAMF_.

There was a moment of frightened silence wherein both parties froze and stared at each other.

Then Neku let loose a wail of anguish and crab-walked away at a breakneck pace, until he was huddled in the corner.

"_Neku-_"

Neku couldn't decide which side to press against the wall, so he simply sat there, hiding behind his pike fence-like kneecaps. Joshua started over towards him, to which Neku snarled and pointed menacingly. "Don't you come any closer, you...you rape-murderist! I'll rip your eyes out!"

"Big, fat, hairy deal," Joshua scoffed. "I'm immortal, remember?"

"_Then may you suffer for all eternity!_"

Joshua folded his arms and sighed, looking at Neku with nothing but pure, motherly disapproval. "Neku, honey, I thought you trusted me?"

"I'll trust you when you're not half-naked and holding my poor exposed self at gunpoint, sure!" Neku raved, his eyes wide as saucers.

The other boy rolled his eyes. "Good gracious God in heaven," he sighed, exasperation bleeding from his wounded heart. He took a few more cautious steps forward, to which Neku emitted several anguished noises. "I cannot _believe_ I have to tell you this, but Neku Sakuraba, I am not a homosexual."

"Maybe you're bi! I don't know! DON'T COME OVER HERE-"

"I am most assuredly _not_ bi, trans, mono, pan, pot, pitcher, kitchen sink or sassafras!" Joshua gesticulated desperately. "Get a _grip_, will you?"

"IF THAT'S TRUE, THEN _WHY IS YOUR NOSE BLEEDING?_"

Joshua punched Neku in the face.

"...Oh," said Neku, blood gooshing out of his left nostril. "I see."

"The whole nosebleed thing is an old wives' tale, anyway. We all need to settle down here," Joshua said, trying to wipe the scarlet flow from his own face, but only succeeding in smearing it around disgustingly. He scowled and knelt in front of Neku, resting a hand on the boy's arm like a mom might.

Neku flinched away but said nothing.

Josh sighed and tried to calm Neku with cold logic. "Look. This is a creepy situation, I know, but raving and shrieking these_ baseless accusations_ will only cause tempers to rise – and in so doing, impede our chances for survival. You..._do_ realize that we are stuck in a sealed pit without any supply of food, water, or air, right? You do realize that it is_ probably_ wise to stay on the best terms possible with each other?"

Neku nodded curtly. "_Yeah_, but-"

"Good. Now shut up." Joshua wiped his sticky bangs out of his face. "If you struggle, you'll only make it worse for yourself."

"What is going on here," said OJ. He had managed to haul himself onto the platform again - just in time to see shirtless Joshua and naked Neku staring solemnly at each other, noses bleeding freely, while Joshua rested a hand on the other boy's arm somewhat tenderly.

Our Joshua and Neku s-l-o-w-l-y turned to look at him.

"...Uh," OJ said, sputtering as he averted his eyes. "Wh-what's...um...s-sorry if I'm, uh...w-why are your noses bleeding?"

Joshua and Neku punched OJ in the face.

"...Oh," said OJ, a thick waterfall of blood gooshing out of his nose. "...Ouch?"

* * *

An impromptu caucus was called among the three. Neku scuttled away, modestly, and wiggled in behind a thick and dry vine to hide, only poking his head out when he was absolutely needed – or had a snarky comment to share. This, as you can imagine, got old fast. Meanwhile, our Josh sat in front of Neku's vine, running sticky fingers through his knotted hair in a vain attempt to untangle it before it evolved into a true nightmare. OJ stood around and paced, every so often casting furtive glances at the mangled Joshua unit twitching on the corner of the platform.

"I think that, as a group," Neku offered, after a while of tumultuous bickering, banter, and back-and forth that brought no contribution to the progress of the story and so has been omitted. "we should take turns wearing Joshua's pants. It'll be like the conch, you know, in the Lord of the Flies. Whaddaya think, Josh?"

There was an unspoken agreement that our Joshua was the leader for now – this was largely because he was the one with the most clothes on.

"I think that's a stupid idea, partner." Joshua flipped his crusty hair back and tried to look as aloof as he could with his squishy belly showing. "What we need to focus on is not the issue of nudity – for God's sake! Nobody cares, Neku -"

"I'm sorry! I just had a weird dream and I-"

"_Ooh_, what was it _about_, Nekkun?" Joshua's eyes narrowed. "Was it a_ good_ dream? Was it a _goooood _dream about super wet and wooly sexy fun times with Josh-Josh? Huh?"

"Absolutely not!" Neku snapped, gripping his Modesty Vine with white knuckles. "It was about...you getting a sponge bath...from you...and you...and you...and you...well, uh, it was more like a nightmare."

"Yes, a nightmare about super wet and wooly sexy fun times."

Neku scowled. "_Wrong_, dumbass! What I _meant_ was...uhh..." His voice trailed off into uncomfortable muttering and he retreated behind his vine, tugging at his bangs.

"That wasn't a dream, um," offered OJ, ears turning slightly pink. "In case you're, uh, wondering." He frisked his fingers through his hair nervously, and was quite delighted to find that the rose was gone. "It was me...the clergyfolk had to, um, wash me off, because I fell down a few times in the muck."

"Why even bother?" Joshua sighed, kicking his heels up and reclining back on the Modesty Vine, much to Neku's displeasure. He ran a critical eye over OJ's body, which was just as thickly-encrusted with drying slime as his and Neku's. "Seems like a waste of effort." Suddenly he saw something hovering by OJ's head, but in the blink of an eye it had retreated – a glowing red line, twisted around a black symbol, zipping back into the blackness like a skittish fly... His eyes narrowed._ Finally, a Noise. It's about time; I was_ almost _starting to miss them._

"Yeah, well..."

Joshua inspected his glowing finger. "Anyway, as I was saying...we don't need to focus as much on the nudity issue as the issue of 'getting out.' Of course, I'm immortal, so I, unfortunately, am the least important, as far as rations are concerned." He looked up through lidded lashes at OJ, who was rubbing his weak biceps uncomfortably. A strip of black appeared on the back of his shoulder, vanishing as the boy dropped his arms and gave Joshua a 'look.'

"What?"

"I know Neku's only a mere mortal. ("Hey, come on...") What about you?" The Composer nodded at OJ. "Turn around, please."

OJ raised an eyebrow, but complied. Over his shoulders and upper back was a shiny, jet-black tattoo of skeletal bat wings - they folded over his scapula, the barbed tips curling in to tickle the dip of his spine. The prongs where the wing-thumb ought to be jutted up onto the curve of his shoulder, like stripes of ink. "I'm a Reaper," OJ explained, slowly. "A Tenor Harrier." He said this last bit with a touch of pride.

Neku poked his head out. "Really? Cool! I'm a Science Wizard, specializing in Skepticism. Currently, I'm at Level Four: Critcizing Of Your Muscial Technobabble."

Joshua rolled his eyes. _Good to know._ "The Wizard of Blah-Blahs is the only one we need to worry about feeding. You don't need to worry about food as much as _Points_."

"Points? ...Oh." The Reaper froze up. OJ had completely forgotten about those, clearly. Unwise, as they were kind of his life force.

"Yes, Points. How long has it been since you last Erased a Player?"

"I've been here for two weeks, I think, what's today – Monday or Tuesday? Um, I left on an off-week, so..." He did some finger-counting, much to the mortification of our Joshua. "That makes it...about two and a half weeks, I think? Almost a month?"

"Do you remember how many points you had at last count?"

"...Two? I'm just a Tenor-"

"Right." Joshua nodded contemplatively. "Orange Juice, you are in Big Trouble."

There passed a period of heavy silence.

"Nice tats, bro," said Neku. OJ smiled weakly and rubbed his arm.

"Shut your mouth, dear. The men are talking." Joshua sighed. "Okay, so. If we don't find a way out, OJ will probably die first, since he's really cutting it close on his points. Then Neku will kick the bucket, dying from either dehydration or starvation, and then I will be left here alone to rot for all eternity."

"Sounds dandy," said OJ, miserably.

Neku shivered, peeking out from behind his Modesty Vine again. "Hey...why can't you guys, like, team up and fly us out of here? I mean, Josh can fly-"

"Levitate," Josh corrected. "And not here, I can't."

"-and OJ can fly too, if he has wings..."

"They don't do much," OJ admitted. "And besides, I can't take them out in the RG. And I can't tune into the UG, for some reason."

Joshua lifted his glowing finger up and examined the shadowy roof of the vine-lined chamber. "Anyway, the exit is sealed up tight. If, through some obscure miracle, we got up there, I doubt that we could even open it up."

"We could try and use, you know, the slime as, uh, lubricant-"

"NO!"

"Well, fine! Never mind!" Neku was beginning to feel the first shreds of panic stirring in his back. He huddled into the soft, rubbery green, rubbing his goosebump-riddled arms and shivering. Why was it so cold back here?

OJ continued to pace. "At least the acid stuff doesn't harm us. Why is that, anyway?"

Joshua sighed. "Dissonance, you blundering oaf. Dissonance! Didn't they teach you this?"

"...I just graduated to Harrier, my good sir. I doubt I will be fucking with reality any time soon."

"She's really good in bed, you know."

OJ crossed his arms and sighed pathetically. "This isn't CSI: Pamela, okay? Can we please cut back on the biting sarcasm?"

"Wow! _Now_ I've seen everything," said Neku. The collective strength of the two NOT HELPING, BRO glares he received was enough to glue his mouth shut for ten minutes.

"Anyway... Who said anything about sarcas—okay, okay, I'll cut it out already." Joshua picked at his fingernails in an irritable fashion. "So, Dissonance. Everything is made up of vibrations, correct? Multiple planes of reality can exist in the same space because the different planes are vibrating at different frequencies. It's the same for universes, but instead of frequencies we'll call them 'keys.' So, you, Neku, and I are all from different universes, correct? Swapping universes doesn't change your key. We will assume that Neku and I, for purposes of illustration, are from a C key universe, you are from a B key universe, and this place is a D key universe. A B note and a D note clash, don't they? Not as much as a C and a D, but you get the gist."

OJ nodded. "Okay."

"Blah blah blah, covered all this two chapters ago..." Joshua scratched at some of the crusted slime on his tummy. "The funny thing about Dissonance is that we, as creatures of another universe, do not actually exist in this one. We are not technically contained within any layer of reality – we don't actually exist on the RG, or the UG, or anything. Does that make sense? It's kind of an esoteric concept for piddly youngsters like you."

OJ frowned. "That's a little harsh."

"Got it memorized? Good. Okay, we've covered the nuts and bolts of it. Buckle your seat belt and get ready to rhumba, kids, because here comes the mind screw. Everything is made up of Soul – including the universe itself. Arguably, the universe – all of reality – is one impossibly gargantuan Soul that spans every shade of existence. Got that? Okay – since we aren't part of this universe's soul, the universe doesn't know where to _put _us. We appear, suddenly, at the 'level' we were last at – in our case, the RG - and the balance is suddenly thrown off because the universe has two more units of Soul than it has room for." Joshua gesticulated vaguely, his hands floating around in circles as if he were a mime. A mime that failed No Talking 101, of course."The universe has to expand to make room for us being here. This causes reality itself to warp around us – causing the prickly feeling whenever you make contact with something. Your vibe clashes with the universe's vibe, and reality warps as it tries to accommodate you. 'Accommodate,' a word which here means 'tune your key to its key.' Which is impossible, like dividing by zero or something. By forcing the universe to 'divide by zero,' you break it – because it just can't do it. It can't be done."

"Okay..."

"So, the idea is that the farther you journey from your home universe, the greater the warp reality makes around you. In theory, if you managed to cross enough universes, reality would begin to decay around you as it struggled to acclimate to your vibe. To such extents would it decay that – to the native denizens of that universe – you would no longer appear as anything remotely human, or even comprehensible. You would perceive Joshua, but they would perceive some freaky Lovecraftian beast from the ethereal voids. People's brains, like reality, would attempt to 'divide by zero' and they would collapse – it is impossible to imagine numbers such as a googolplex, correct? This is the same thing, kind of. They would go mad at the sight of you. Physical space would warp and crumple around you – your physical attributes, or half-assed approximations thereof, would appear in everyday things like trees and cars and dumb stuff like that. Eventually, it's supposed that you would effectively turn into a black hole.

"Why is this only speculated? Well, Composers can't jump more than, oh, say, ten significant universes away from their own. Significant means they have actual, visible differences. For example, the Tin Pin world versus the world with Neku as the Composer versus the world where I am Composer. These things are kind of hard to measure, given that they are practically incomprehensible. Angels, on the other hand, are extra-dimensional beings. Their consciousness exists outside of all the universes. This means that whatever universe they enter, it's the same 'distance' from their point of origin. They have the same amount of reality warp here as anywhere. It's the same for Demons, but that's a whole different ball game.

"Anyway, this reality warping is why we aren't affected by the acid. The acid can't touch us because we don't exist. Technically. We are here in spatial terms, but in every other way we still exist on our home universes, respectively."

Here Joshua paused to breathe.

Knotting his eyebrows confusedly, OJ said, "Okay, about that last bit. Aren't we, uh, here?"

Joshua rubbed his temples. "No, we're not. Not exactly. Ugh...this is hard to explain...Like, um, imagine two pieces of paper, one black and one white. Cut off a corner of the white one and put it on the black piece. It's not part of the black paper, is it? It's still white paper, right? Being on top of the black paper doesn't make it black? Okay. We're just like that piece of white paper, except we can't cover any of the black paper. Things cannot occupy the same space at the same time, and you have to remember air and dust and the other miscellaneous particles that exist, even in places that seem completely blank. So, the black paper cuts a nice little hole for us to exist in and shunts the Soul it cut out off to the side. Kind of like how you'd make a part of a tessellation thing, I guess."

OJ nodded. "Okay...so, wait, let me see if I have this straight. Our clothes melted off in the acid because they exist in the same universe as the acid, but _we_ don't, so we're safe?"

"...Yes. Yes, that's right. The universe_ thinks_ we exist, so it pushes matter out of the way for us as if we did, and it thinks we ought to exist, so it tries to grab us and pull us into its own vibe – but because we don't really exist, it is impossible. We don't actually touch anything here. We don't have bodies, so the universe creates a rough approximation of a...a wetsuit, made out of warped reality. We cannot actually manipulate objects. The universe manipulates them as if we did, with the reality warp wetsuit, because that's how it thinks it should be."

Neku let out an anguished moan. "_Universes don't think!_"

Joshua rolled his eyes. "Abridged version: The acid can't hurt us because we're special."

OJ nodded. "Well, since it doesn't hurt us... Maybe we could use it for food, somehow?" He threaded his fingers through his hair, deep in thought.

"You are_ exactly _like Neku. All this sci-fi information just got pumped into your brain, and all you can think about is food." Joshua sighed and pulled out his phone, which was somehow still functioning despite all it had been through. He pressed 'three' and raised the speaker to his ear.

Nothing but garbled, hideous noise on the other end. Like the handmaidens of Cthulhu were playing jump rope. Or something. The Composer scowled and tried again. And again.

"It's pointless!" OJ shouted suddenly, slamming his bare foot into the wall with a dull squish. "You can call all you want, but it won't matter! You can garble about how we don't exist and what not, but it still doesn't mean a damn thing! We're all going to die!" He buried his face in his hands and sank to the floor, quivering. The lone Noise wavered closer to the group, glowing menacingly in the corner of Joshua's Dead-O-Vision™.

"At least dying slowly in a pit is better than getting gang-banged by a bunch of Joshua clones," Neku said, dully, picking at his toenail.

Joshua giggled.

"That's not funny!" Neku snapped. "There's really nothing funny about that idea, you insensitive jerkface."

"No, I agree, _that's_ not funny, it's just..." The Composer sighed loftily, still managing to be condescending despite it all. "I mean, I would have thought you'd have figured it out by now..."

"Figured what out?"

"Oh, you know..." Joshua gave up on his useless calling, opened up the High N Low application, and started clicking away in as bored and uninterested of a manner he could possibly summon. Unseen, the Noise seized the opportunity and zipped over to OJ, turning golden as it sank its symbol-claws into the distraught boy's head.

"_What?_" Neku's voice rose, cracking on the hill of agitation.

Joshua giggled softly, but otherwise ignored his pester-toy.

"Guys, please," OJ snapped, sitting up. He narrowed his eyes, throwing the phone a dark look. "Why do _you _get to play a game?"

"And wear pants?" Neku threw his hat into the ring, privately hoping Joshua would get pushed into the graywater at some point during the discussion.

"Because I'm worth it."

Neku growled. "So...what's so funny, again?"

"It's funny that you automatically assume this is a dimension full of hot boy-on-boy action-packed lemon parties," Joshua drawled airily. "When, obviously, it's a dimension full of _cannibals_. I mean, really. Any layabout could have gotten it, right from the get-go."

Like he hadn't just figured this out an hour ago. Asshole.

Neku sighed. "Well. Dying slowly in a pit is still preferable to being eaten alive, because we still have a chance to escape." His teeth chattered together and he rubbed his arms fiercely, huddling behind his Modesty Vine.

There was stiff silence for a moment.

"You seem to be taking it quite well," Joshua observed.

"Well, at least they can't get us down here," Neku pointed out. "And also – if you're implying that I should be flipping multiple lids from each of my jars about the whole, uh, 'I told you it was a slash zone but all along I knew that it wasn't' thing, well...I trust you." The Modesty Vine twitched as Neku shifted around, hidden from view but obviously shivering, regardless. "You were probably coddling my sanity or something – something bizarre and condescending, but well-intentioned. Or... something."

"...Yes," said Joshua. "That is exactly what I have done here."

OJ gave a sudden cough that sounded oddly like the word "bullshit!" It was probably just my imagination though.

Everything was quiet again. Quietly dismal, as nobody really knew what came next – other than the slow onset of death, that is.

"So..." OJ said, turning to Joshua. "About the pants..."

"No," said Joshua flatly, playing his game.

OJ sighed. "Really! It's just that – well – I think Neku's idea about dividing the pants between ourselves is a fine idea, because-"

"This isn't the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Orange Juice-boy," said Joshua, in general deadpan disapproval.

"I still think that we should share them."

Dull violet eyes narrowed. "Why should we?"

"It's only fair," OJ said simply, giving a sagely nod.

Joshua snorted in quiet bemusement. "Fair? 'Fairness' is overrated."

"Oh, really? What's wrong with fairness?" OJ's tone was sharp-edged with testiness.

"Well, fairness implies equal treatment," Joshua said. "For example, Erasure is a necessary part of the Game, since it removes the weak Souls and recycles them. But if, say, someone was Erased, and brought back to life, that wouldn't be fair, now would it?"

"Why on earth would you do that," OJ said, flatly.

"For completely selfish reasons," Joshua replied. There really was no good, solid reason to resurrect Rhyme, after all, other than the fact that Neku and Friends would have never talked to him again, ever, and hold him in unanimous hatred from afar.

OJ rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Can you at least let, uh, 'your' Neku have them?"

"You talk as if I'm either a dog...or a lawyer," Neku grumbled, shivering fiercely. "...Jeez, why is it so cold?"

"See? The poor guy needs some clothes!" OJ cried, rounding on Joshua again.

Joshua shook his head. "I am not letting Neku Sakuraba into my pants. We just had a big fiasco about it. Didn't you hear."

"He pushed me off the platform," OJ said, waving the topic aside. The lax flip of his hand looked like a blue smudge in Joshua's finger-light. He got to his feet and started walking towards Joshua, hands clenching and unclenching, as if warming up for a fondlefest. "Or so my sources tell me. I don't know. They didn't bother to cite their research. Anyway. Sharing the pants is -"

"A stupid idea." Joshua stuffed his phone in his pocket and clung to the bedraggled denim desperately. "Now let's quit considering it."

Meanwhile, Neku was busy making a discovery. "Hey, guys-"

"Dear me, why are you so adverse to the concept? Is Joshy-woshy_ scaaaaywed _of the homowomantic impwications?"

Joshua sat up abruptly, his foresight ringing alarm bells. "In case you haven't noticed, this isn't Goodwill! My body is_ not_ your personal clothes drive, okay? Just deal with the clothing discrepancies!"

Neku poked his head out from behind the Modesty Vine. "Guys!"

"Oh, I've seen it all before!" OJ crowed, coming at our Joshua with an insane look on his face. "Ha! Hee! Hee! Just take it off!"

"Unhand me, you savage!" Joshua spat as OJ grabbed him roughly by the wrist. He tried to scramble away, but OJ twisted his arm and Joshua was suddenly sculpted out of vanilla pudding. "..._Nehh!_ Ouchouchouch-"

OJ tugged angrily at Joshua's belt loops, much to Joshua's distress.

"Cut it out!"

"Hee hee hee! Well, look at that. Selfish! You're so selfish! You always put yourself first! Always always always! No, you _don't _like sharing, do you? You don't LIKE fairness, huh? You'd rather keep all the best things to yourself! You'd rather be eating _Cheese Twists _instead of helping him escape! You know what else isn't fair? Huh? You wanna talk about UNFAIR? HUH? YOU KILLED HIM, YOU SON OF A BITCH - YOU LET HIM DIE – YOU LET HIM GET RIPPED APART!" OJ seized Joshua by the shoulders and shook him violently. "EATEN ALIVE! YOU _HID_ INSTEAD OF HELPING, RIGHT? BECAUSE YOU WERE _SCARED_, RIGHT? HEE! HEE! _BECAUSE OF YOU_ – HE'S DEAD! _WITHOUT YOU_ – HE'D STILL BE HERE!"

Foam flecked the corner of OJ's mouth, his bright amethyst eyes spinning in their sockets like rocks in a tumbler.

Suffice it to say he was slightly unstable.

"Uh, hello, ladies, I'm right here," said Neku, raising his voice concernedly. "All in one piece, incidentally. Um, OJ, please don't kill my friend. Again." He was torn between letting Joshua get the throttling he karmic-ally deserved and intervening before there was no Joshua left to throttle.

"Neku, do something! He's gone – _grk_ – he's possessed!" Joshua choked out, thrashing in OJ's suffocating grip – his crazed alternate self had him by the neck now, and was howling murderously.

"HA! HA HA HA! HEE HEE HEE-"

Neku felt he'd seen that crazed look before, coming at him with a cocked-and-loaded gun and a similarly cocky grin.

The gun...

He grit his teeth, scrambled out from behind the Modesty Vine, and grabbed the dark blotch of gunmetal. It was kind of hard to see in the flickering light of Joshua's finger as it was whipped back and forth with ferocious disregard, but Neku remembered where it had fallen. (He made a point to keep tabs on that thing.) Joshua cried out involuntarily, gasping for air.

"St-stop...please..._nyeeaagh!_"

OJ dug his fingers into Joshua's neck until his nails drew blood – er, ectoplasm – and his victim's eyes bulged in desperation. He giggled uncontrollably and started bashing Joshua's head against the hard ground, the cries of agony sounding like delightful music. He took that hateful, hideous face and smashed it into the ground again and again and again and – CRACK!

OJ's eyes widened for a second, then rolled back in his head. He slumped over, crumpled to the ground.

* * *

Neku backed away from the now-unconscious boy with a fearful look on his face. "How's that, huh? Asshole," he spat, gripping the gun in his white, shaking hand. Clocking someone with a pistol-whip to the back of the head didn't really seem fair, in Neku's opinion, but then again...

Joshua lay on the ground as well, clutching at his neck and gasping like he was watching Chriss Angel do street magic. His face was practically the same color as his eyes, albeit ruddier and blotchier, and he was shaking so hard he looked like he might fall apart any second.

The Proxy was a little..._scared_ by this. Joshua was a demi-god, an ancient being possessed of wisdom and power and stuff. He should have been able to blast his attacker to pieces. Neku knotted his brow and knelt down, helping Joshua into a sitting position.

The Composer stared at OJ, lying there as still and peaceful as a corpse, and whispered something hoarsely. "L-looks like _someone_...has some s-self-hate issues...gracious..."

His nose had started bleeding again, along with his partially-healed lip. He was a mess. He looked up at Neku after a minute and said, "Thank you."

It was stripped of any haughty air of condescension, any mocking inflection or teasing tone strangely absent. For once Joshua was being completely honest. Sincere.

It was _disturbing_.

"Come on, dude." Neku said after a minute of dumb silence. "Let's ditch this psycho."

"Ooh, we should hide on the other side of the pool! He'll_ never _find us!" Joshua said dryly - which was interesting, considering that his face and mouth were covered in dark red liquid.

Neku scowled, but then grinned, despite himself. "Good, you haven't completely lost it. Thank the gods." He patted Josh gingerly on the head.

Joshua wrinkled his nose and winced a tiny bit – it hurt to move his facemeats. "Don't touch me when you're naked, please."

"Ha ha. But seriously, let's ditch this psycho." Neku jacked his thumb over his shoulder, crossing his legs in an embarrassed way. "Check the wall where I was hiding."

Raising an eyebrow in snarky intrigue (if that's even a thing), Joshua delicately picked his way over OJ's spreadeagled limbs and padded over to the Modesty Vine. He peeked behind its greenish, rubbery length, holding his finger out for light - the part of the cavern where Neku sat was abruptly plunged into humid, green darkness because of this action, but Neku would just have to deal. It looked basically like a creeper-carpeted cranny barely big enough for someone to crouch in. _Big whoop._

And it was a _cold_ cranny, to boot. _Why is it so cold here – wait!_

The vines covering the wall looked...a little different. Just a tiny bit strange.

This warranted an investigation. Joshua poked at them curiously. To his surprise, the vines felt like there was nothing behind them – and through the gaps in the springy tendrils, you could feel an icy draft.

At least, it was icy compared to the stifling heat of the main cavern. Joshua nodded once to himself. Obviously there was some kind of passage behind these vines, and it led up to the surface – the cold air had to come from somewhere, after all. Josh got this pessimistic vision of sawing away at the vines with his stubby fingernails for twenty sleepless nights, only to unearth an air conditioner, but he disposed of the thought immediately. He just hated negative people, he wouldn't let himself dip into the blue oceans of despair! Nay, he would tread water until the end of days, fighting to stay positive, hoping against hope that he would wash up on the shore of some island and it would be pink and he could name it Pink Love Island and start his own nation of love and humanitarianism where every person was an okay person on the inside and there were no clones and only one Joshua and it was him and he was the king of the island. Yes. He would stay positive, continue to fight the black n' blue currents of bad attitude as he swam like a mad dog towards paradise.

"So, what do you think?" Neku asked.

He had snuck up behind Joshua.

Neku rubbed his ear, wincing. "...Jeez, you don't need to _scream_ like that, it's just me..."

Joshua clutched his unbeating heart, frowning stiffly. "Th-that wasn't a scream, you goose. That was a...a battlecry."

"Uh-huh."

"My Composer senses felt you approaching and warned me of an incoming dangerous enemy adversary of some nefarious sort. So, naturally, I assumed battle stance. Sorry if that alarmed you, Nekkun."

Neku rolled his eyes. "Yeah. Do you think we can cut through these vines somehow?"

"Perhaps," Joshua murmured thoughtfully. He knelt down in front of the vines and pulled out his pockets. "Hey Neku, have you ever seen MacGyver?"

"No, what's that?"

"Okay, never mind." Joshua examined his available tools. He had:

one (1) tacky, modded phone

one (1) crumpled-up gum wrapper

one (1) Reaper gun, handed to him by the Proxy

two (2) balls of pocket lint

one (1) Fall From the Heavens pin

and one (1) Holy Light pin

He also theorized that he could probably relieve OJ of his underwear and use that, but what constructive purpose could that possibly serve? And no, pleasing the Joshua fangirls is not a constructive purpose, because the audience can't get in here and mess with stuff like I can. That would just be weird.

"Oh? Why don't you just cut these vines for us?" Joshua asked.

With what, the Sword of Deus Ex Machina? You're on your own, MacGruber.

Joshua sighed. So the easy way out was not an option, hm. He ran a critical eye over his instruments, preparing to compose a soulful ballad about escaping from a giant plant stomach while half-naked.

He could try and shoot the vines, but at this close of a range? The noise would blow his ears out or something. Plus, the vines were really small and it would take forever to shoot them all in half... and his gun ran on Soul bullets. Did he really want to have another "crystal episode?"Stroking his gun, quivering and moaning weakly, slick with disgusting sweat as he pumped the trigger fantastically into the vines? Glancing at Neku in between every two rounds in an attempt to secure eye contact, his hazy violet eyes turning weakly upwards through his fluttering eyelashes? He would attempt to lock eyes with Neku and convey that 'Sakuraba, I am _not_ imagining this is your gun and I am _certainly not _getting off on you right now, this is an incredibly uncomfortable process with my powers suppressed as they are,' and obviously fail spectacularly? It even sounded fakey in his own head!

Bleh bleh! No, thank you.

He looked at his two psych pins, useless without his phone. Which he had. His phone was useless without his powers.

Which he had. Distilled – but they were still there, albeit in incredibly small amounts.

Joshua smirked and picked up his Holy Light, smoothly undoing the safety-pin stickity needle thing and poking it into the middle of the web of vines. He pressed the mat of tangled tendrils carefully, making sure there wasn't a wall behind it – there wasn't, good. He then picked up his phone, opened up High N Low, and gently touched it to the glossy surface of the pin.

"What are you doing, McGayver?" Neku asked, peeking over Joshua's shoulder.

"Mac_Gy_ver." Joshua frowned, holding up his glowing finger. "Get out of my bubble, okay. I need to focus." He poked the screen of his phone with the blue-white flame that danced on his finger pad.

Strange lights shone out from every crack in the orange casing. The screen flickered and grew bright as the little minigame vanished, leaving nothing but the combo map.

"Oh hey look it's your psych." Neku rolled his eyes. "Your psych. _Psych_. As in, your _psychic UG-only weapon_. How is this going to help."

"Dissonance," Joshua grumbled, eyebrows knotting and eyelids twitching a little. Equal to three. Okay, doable. He clicked his way to a three card.

With every press of a button, the pin grew a little brighter, pulsing and glowing. The vines began to steam – a strange smell of barbecue wafted out from under Holy Light in choking, vaporous tendrils. Neku coughed and smacked them away from his face. Once the combo had been completed, the pin shone brilliantly, and throbbed with a pale-blue pulse. Apparently "pale blue" does not equal cold, because there was an explosion of burnt brisket-scented smoke and a flash of light – once Neku cleared the hideous fumes away with his windmilling arms, it could be seen that the vines had been reduced to brittle cylinders of ash.

Only in a 6-inch radius, mind you.

"Drat, it's usually a two-foot radius at least," Joshua grumbled. He gingerly plucked his pin from the charred vines, and they crumbled away easily.

"What is." Neku said it so flatly it barely qualified as a question.

"My Jesus B—my lasers. My Holy Light Beams." Joshua shrugged lazily and appraised the hole. A dark, dank space loomed ahead, gripped halfheartedly by the creepers. It extended for some ways, sloping upward. A cool, gentle wind whispered down and kissed their faces sweetly, promisingly, as beautiful to them as the sight of Princess Peach's castle on the horizon would be to two exasperated plumbers. "Well. A few more rounds of that and we'll be golden."

Neku shrugged and turned to leave. "Well, get cracking. I'm gonna go monitor Juice-chan."

"Good idea." Joshua squished his pin into the next section of the vines and got to work, a dismal air about him.

* * *

**A/N: **Dude, okay.

I have nothing to say about anything except I am ready for school to STOP

I have a hideous headache

and I also have _three more days_

I can make it I can make it I can make it

go go go go go!


	19. In which Joshua Farts Around A Whole Lot

_**JOSHUA TRIPS**_

CHAPTER NINETEEN: IN WHICH JOSHUA DOES THE SHOPPING WHILE THE OTHER GUYS JUST KINDA CHILL FOR A WHILE

The Story So Far: Josh and Neku are stuck in an alternate universe full of cannibals that masquerade as creepy harems. Up to their ankles in antics, the two have just been thrown into a pit of acid and now are on the road to escape. What will become of them? What will become of the pistol-whipped Other Joshua? ONLY TIME WILL TELL _BUM BUM BUUUHM_

Of Note In This Chapter: Joshua's precious baby is stolen, OJ is dead to the world, and Neku gets touched a lot by slime and then is promptly forgotten about

Rating: T

_**~*GENRE: Romantic Comedy Yaoi Funfest ^-^ watch out for yummy LEMONS lol*~**_

* * *

A few minutes later, the vines had been burnt into two clean halves. One could easily crawl through the freshly opened hole, assuming one was a fairly anorexic-looking teenager of short stature.

Our heroes certainly fit the bill, and soon they were laying in the darkness beyond the so-called Heart of Pamela.

The accommodations were scant. Joshua and Neku wound up crushed together, flesh against flesh, which neither party really enjoyed. Partly because "flesh" is a gross word. Also partly because, well, _ew_.

Joshua held up his finger light, examining the small tunnel they had unearthed. His cold, clammy arm rubbed against Neku's soft and warm one in the process in a gross and kind of sticky way, causing both parties to suddenly have powerful erections. And if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.

Choked and claustrophobic, the crawlspace felt like the inside of a constricted, knot-covered artery. Damp air curled wetly and heavily over their skin. Every surface was slick with dripping goo, thanks to a wedge of Pamela's throbbing green flesh that curved down over their heads, obscuring the rest of the tunnel beyond. Joshua squinted, measuring the gap under the Pamela-wall with his eyes. It looked like it would have to be single-file past that point. He shifted around, sticky nectar clinging to the skin of his belly. It was dark, it was uncomfortably warm, it smelled funny, and there was barely room to breathe, and Neku's aura of discomfort was practically an entity of its own, taking up space and gulping down oxygen.

"It's pretty tight in here," Joshua commented idly.

"Hmph," Neku grunted. He was obviously incredibly disconcerted by the entire situation, but this was also their only hope of escape. Neku had to go along with whatever the Composer decided at this point, pretty much, or risk getting ogled by the unstable OJ and his bizarre hero-crush.

Joshua found himself at a crossroads – on one hand, Neku was incredibly uncomfortable right now, and also anchored to his side. There weren't many better opportunities to bother him.

On the other hand, Neku would probably rip his jaw off.

He weighed the two halves carefully.

"What are we waiting for, Josh?" Neku asked, impatient.

"Uhm," Joshua mumbled, weighing complete. "Nothing, I'm just...thinking."

"Well, Socrates, you can think later. How about we get going?"

The poor Proxy could feel just about every single one of Josh's tendons creaking around whenever the guy moved, which was disgusting. Neku absolutely hated having people invade his personal space. And to make things worse, it was _Joshua_, the animated corpse, of all people! Neku could barely restrain his itchy imagination from picturing all the many civilizations of maggots that were probably seething, just below the surface - the heaving, writhing cream center of the entire pompous pastry. Gross. Whenever Cream Puff moved, he had to move everything, so concrete-cold legs and things were constantly shifting around and rubbing against Neku damply and annoyingly. Neku grimaced multiple times in multiple ways. This was awful.

He was close enough to smell Joshua, too – it was kind of like all the worst qualities of sewers and roadkill, plus sweat and butterscotch, all buried under the stink of Pamela's noxious chyme. It was awful. Breathing was awful. Life was awful.

Joshua's muffled, whiny voice came oozing thickly over Neku's ears. "It looks like it only gets tighter from now on...we're gonna have to go one at a time." After a moment of uncomfortable hesitation, he added: "Don't stare at my bum too much, okay?"

"I wasn't going to!"

"Well, just...don't. Please?"

Neku sighed to himself glumly. _This is just... okay._ _Quit head-whining and take it, just take it, Neku... it's better than starving to death, right...? Shiki, Shiki is waiting at the end of this tunnel – this is a test of your __lo-_ _...uh... friendship, it is a friendship test. Yeah. If you can tolerate rolling around with a dead body for ten minutes, you will have reached god-tier friendship levels. The topmost caliber of camaraderie. The highest echelon of empathic emotions. If you can make it through this tunnel, Shiki will come running out of absolutely nowhere and wrap you in a tearful embrace. She will blush adorably, her eyes will glow with admiration, and then she'll bug you to go shopping or something. Friendship is magic. Friendship is... m-magic... rrgh... must... suppress... emo... urges..._

He grit his teeth and prepared to move onward.

At least Joshua had the courtesy to enter the crawlspace first – him, staring at Joshua's ass, was _obviously_ preferable to the reverse. The lesser of two evils. It was still pretty bad, since Joshua's pants were soaking wet and now that Joshua had mentioned it, his bum was hard to ignore. _Especially since that's all I can see, beside his legs..._ Taking this incredibly awkward view into account, Neku submitted a thousand prayers to every god he knew of – hoping against hope that OJ didn't wake up and try to join them.

He tried to scoot back a little, but the vines squeezed tightly together behind him, closing off the way out in a slippery motion. This filled Neku's guts with a feeling of dark premonition. There was only one way to go, then...

Oblivious to Neku's little internal crisis, Joshua clawed his way up the narrow slope and wriggled into the tight, oozing ring under the awning of Pamela flesh. Warmish gray sludge rushed down to greet him, and he wound up sputtering and wiping his face frantically for almost a whole minute. The tunnel ahead was incredibly small – it clenched against his sides tightly, contracting, like the esophagus of a giant animal. Poor Joshua felt like he was being swallowed up. He was all greasy with slime, so the going was slippery and tough, but at least the hard vines didn't dig into his skin too painfully. The undulations of the tunnel propelled him forward short distances, helpfully enough, but they were no less uncomfortable.

Neku scooted in after him. For what it was worth, he looked as pointedly at Joshua's shoes as he could. This plan went smoothly until a particularly rambunctious contraction shot him forward like a cannon and landed his face in Joshua's butt. The surprise of it all forced the finger-light to go out.

"Ow," Joshua mumbled wetly from up ahead.

"Sorghr," Neku gurgled through a mouthful of slime, struggling to breathe. He tried to yank his head out of the other boy's posterior, but it was no use – the walls rippled against the back of his head and pushed him back. In addition, Joshua's nice shoes were suddenly digging into his ribs. It was hardly comfortable.

From then on, they were mashed together like one giant turd, and Pamela squeezed them out like one, rather slowly. Joshua took this time to muse: _Gee, this is really gross and disturbing~ I can't wait for this to be over~ la la la~ happy thoughts~_

He pictured a chibi version of himself doing the Hare Hare Youkai dance. _Damn, I'm pretty._

For a dark, humid, uncomfortable moment of pure silence they oozed through the dark tunnel, and then - a crack in the vines appeared, a puff of air kissed Joshua's face, and they were suddenly expelled from Pamela's digestive tract like a Human Centipede overdosed on irony.

They rested in a wet, sticky, gasping pile for a few moments, cramming as much oxygen into their lungs as they could with each breath. It was a spectacle of gluttony. Once his ribcage was stuffed full of more oxygen than actual organs, Joshua sat up and looked around.

They were in another dark tunnel, but this one looked like an overgrown hallway and not a green colon. It was much less humid and smelled more of spring than of decaying bogwater; the reason for this, he realized (and saw, simultaneously), was because there was a squarish sliver of light shining at length at the end of the tunnel. A door. And it had been left ajar. Excellent.

Currently, the two were sprawled on the creeper-entangled floor below a steep incline. Distressingly, several tendrils unwound themselves from the ground and began to tug at the waist of Joshua's pants.

"_Step off_," the boy snapped, karate-chopping the stupid green fondlehairs away from his personage.

With a yelp, Neku bolted upright. "Ugh! Hey! Stop! Don't touch that-"

In the span of several seconds, half the creepers seemed to have lifted, rallying to the cause. Their noble mission? Touching Neku's wriggling body all over the place. Joshua smirked. "I think she likes you."

"Shut up!" Neku spat, grabbing fistfuls of the things and yanking them away in a fit of determination. But the more he writhed, the more tendrils seemed to rise from the ground...

"Maybe you should quit moving," Joshua suggested, quietly bemused in kind of a sadistic fashion. (He was kind of mad about having his butt rammed by a giant orange head.)

"Screw that," snapped Neku, whose arms were now encumbered with scores of the wriggly things. "If I stop moving, they'll – gods, will you just...get off! Get off, you sturghgm_mmrrmr..._"

The vines had managed to drag Neku to the ground and were now shoving themselves into his mouth, much to the boy's teary-eyed distress.

Joshua sighed and fired up his finger; the effect was nigh instantaneous. Frenzied, the zounds of creepers immediately reversed direction, sliding back over Neku's body like a million ropy worms, retreating into their holes with anguished wiggling. Neku was once again exposed to the elements – well, at least he wasn't in danger of suffocating.

With one of those "hah!" grunt things, Josh helped Neku into a sitting position, snickering like a snob the whole time. "If she's not careful, Shiki might find herself some competition, hm?"

"Stop talking before I crush your skull," Neku growled. For all the venom his tone contained, he didn't look very menacing.

Joshua grinned. It wasn't very nice of him, the little sociopath.

The naked boy sat there, shivering and slimy and overly miserable. "I'm sick of this. I'm absolutely sick of this. I'm tired and sticky and gross and I want to go _home_."

A vision of Mr. H, checking his eHarmony account, promptly presented itself to the mind's eye of Yoshiya Kiryu. _Crap._ Immediately the wet fish of guilt smacked him squarely in the face, a wet fish that Joshua barely recognized. Shoving the novelty of discovering an as-yet unobserved species of aquatic life aside, he quickly got his act together as best as he could. "Well, um, all in due time, my dear proxy. We... we should get back to the motel, and..."

"No way! I'm not going out there, not _naked_..." Neku shot a glance at the door, looking tortured. "They'll... they'll mob me, and..."

"I thought I told you that the clones are cannibals," Joshua said. "Don't tell me you forgot already, you silly goose-"

"So what? I don't exactly want to be _killed_ either!" Neku flushed in embarrassment, ducking his head down as if there was a collar he could hide behind. "Just – could you get me some clothes? Maybe a towel or something?" He drew his knees up to his chest uneasily, looking pointedly at the wall. "...Please?"

Joshua mock-sighed a sigh of ragged long-suffering suffrage, sounding like a depressed Elizabeth Stanton, and got to his feet. "Okay, okay, I'll get you some clothes. Then we can go home. But, (_ehe_) maybe you should hide in that tunnel until I get back. I don't want to return only to see you've gotten the final kelp wrap of a lifetime." Joshua tapped his chin. "Also, that gray slime will protect you, in case any clones happen to wander in here. I can't imagine why they would, but...you never know."

Neku quickly slid back into the warm tunnel until only his head was poking out; as disgusting as the tunnel was, he was still grateful to be covered. The walls clenched against him uncertainly, but gradually relaxed. Neku grimaced. "But, uh, what about OJ?"

"If he comes up behind you, just kick him in the face." Joshua shrugged and scratched at his crusty tummy. "I think he'll get the message."

* * *

And so, Joshua crept out of the overgrown hallway and shoved his way through the door. He stood there for a moment in the bright sunlight, blinking painfully, shielding his eyes.

The sun wasn't actually all that bright – it hung low, barely visible over the tops of the buildings – but poor Joshua had not seen actual light for at least three hours now. The golden dome glittered and shimmered overhead like a thousand twinkly stars, shining like sequins sewn on the yellow evening dress of the sky. The air was aglow with that golden blur; the hazy, disgusting smell of the roses, warm and thorny, threaded through the wind, enmeshing the air like a giant garden trellis. A warm breeze blew gently against his bare skin, threaded through his stringy mop of hair, bringing with it the taste of hot dust and sun-filled flower fields.

He squinted into the honey sky. It looked, from the position of the sun, like the afternoon was drawing steadily to a close. Joshua decided he'd better get a move on, so he headed to the closest store he could think of that wasn't _completely_ in shambles. Yet.

Lapin Angelique.

The air was warm and dry and bloomed against him like water as he speed-walked past Shibukyu Superstore, headed to the all-too-familiar Lolita boutique. The cross-shaped shadows of the pylons rippled over him, catching him in their diaphanous wires. They stood tall and dark against the washed-out sky, proud sentinels guarding the street. Or something. Joshua shook his head and ran the remaining distance up the dirty road, casting furtive glances into the sprawling webs of shadows that entangled this place, watching for clones.

There were none. It was weird.

_I mean__, there should be more clones out and about, right? They just gathered for a big festival, right?_ Our Joshua was still a bit fuzzy on the details, but at this point he didn't care about filling plot holes. He just wanted to go home.

More importantly, he was seeing things. Each of the myriad roses, now golden, harbored a similarly-golden chump Noise. The glowing symbols flew around their blooms like crazed honeybees, signifying that the flowers themselves were being possessed. Joshua had honestly never heard of that happening – of a Noise possessing a plant. It disturbed him at a deep level, the level of truths. This level was inhabited strictly by the simple, basic expectations of life – grass is green, sky is blue, Neku's hair is orange, Noise possess people, and the Prince's blog gets over one hundred thousand hits a day. A yellow sky he could handle, maybe a blonde Neku from Norway, but a Noise possessing a _plant?_ That's just crazy talk!

Thankfully, there weren't that many roses on his route, and whatever there were just so happened to be facing away from him. Poor ol' Josh's grip on reality remained stable - thank goodness. We wouldn't want him to flip out and start mashing kittens on the highway, now would we?

The heels of his shoes clicked satisfyingly as he scampered up the steps to Lapin Angelique. Unsurprisingly, every available window had been thoroughly smashed in, and so it was with no small amount of disappointment that he entered through the door. A dull man's entrance. Hmph. A delicate harpsichord chime heralded his arrival, which he acknowledged with an exasperated roll of the eyeballs.

Inside L. A., it looked like – well, the place wasn't exactly in _shambles_, but it was pretty darn close. The stands and things had been knocked over, either by Neku's mad dash for freedom or by the Joshes' pursuit, and then there were the bunny toys that our Joshua, not to be outdone, had dumped on the floor. Be it clothing or rabbit, everything strewn underfoot looked incredibly trampled – almost to the point where it looked like the plush carpeting was completely covered. Yes, we're talking double carpet all the way across the floor. Wah wah, oh, my God! So intense. Conversely, the cobwebby junk dangling from the ceiling was largely unmolested, but nobody cares about the ceiling, do they?

Golden shafts of light pierced through the shattered windows, setting alight a million swirling dust motes and bronzing the interior of the shop with a hazy glow. It was quiet, but for the distant stir of the wind outside. Occasionally, a chime off in some hidden corner would twinkle, disturbed by the faintest eddy of a breeze, but... other than that, it was completely silent.

Joshua surveyed the damage. _Hm, looks like a __wildebeest stampede_ _took a detour through the bunny realm. If I'm not careful, I'll trip over a dead lion and his grieving cub. _He frowned darkly. _I have had it up to _here _with tripping_. He envisioned a chibi version of himself sternly holding a hand up to his nose to show where "here" was.

With a snort, Josh resolved to see if he could salvage anything wearable from the wreckage. He picked his way over to the corner, every footstep crunching on bits of broken glass or trampled petticoats – there were some untouched racks of clothes, cowering in the corner. They were all on clearance.

"Ooh, ten yen off the market price!" Joshua scoffed. "What a _steal_." He rifled through the shirts with a businesslike manner, finally selecting a pair of shirt-and-arm-warmers and bondage pants for Nek-Nek, and for himself, a cute bunny parka. There were quite a few frou-frou dresses that remained untouched by cloney feet – they looked like they belonged on incredibly expensive porcelain dolls, not on the sweaty bags of flesh that we call "human beings." Their lacy trims and silky satins whispered tantalizing promises to our Joshua, who stared at them, sorely tempted.

Nobody was around, right? He was all alone? Neku wasn't here, Neku was safe and sound in his cozy little plant rectum. Other Josh was incapacitated, surely he would never know...?

Joshua reached out with tentative fingers, stroking the gorgeous fabric shakily. It shivered under his fingers, humming sweetly. Seductively. His ashen eyebrows furrowed, he bit his lip...muh! Would anyone find out?

_Could_ anyone find out?

His grip tightened delicately around the fragile dress. Black satin like a Sylvan whisper on his fingertips, ivory lace as intricate as a snowflake's ribs... after a ridiculously tense moment, Josh yanked the thing off the hanger and clutched it to his chest breathlessly. His eyes widened for a moment as he dug his fingers into the airy fabric, crushing it to the bare skin of his torso – good Lord, it even _felt_ pretty. He kind of wanted to bury his face in it and sniff away, until his lungs were coated with the pungent reek of femininity, but that was a dumb idea.

He bit his lip and glanced from left to right, scanning the dark innards of the shop – aha! Over there! Set in an intricate golden frame and only slightly cracked, a floor-length mirror stood sadly in the corner. Tossing the bunny parka and stuff over his shoulder like an afterthought, Joshua scampered over to the mirror, every swish of the dress against his skin sending electric tingles up his spine.

Pinching the shoulders of the dress as if they were made from rice paper and holding them in alignment with his own, the wispy boy examined his reflection anxiously. The dress looked flat and awkward like this, hanging against him like a limp skin, but... the frothy ruffles... the frosty lace... the shimmering black ribbons, almost oily in their smoothness... his breath stuck in his throat, his ears began to burn.

A hot blush crept across his face, slowly but surely, warming his cheeks with a charming pink color. _Ah, the Composer of Shibuya... wearing a dress... imagine the outcry, imagine the _scandal_..._

_This is stupid._

He struggled into it anyway, sliding it over his crusty creampuff cranium and flabby arms. His head seemed to fill with ditzy flowers as it passed through. "Uwee hee hee..."

With a coy twirl and a nervous giggle, he watched the soft skirts whirl about him in a gorgeous fan, as liquid as water. He yanked his pants off and kicked them away, letting the lace tickle his hairy legs. Butterflies sprang from the lumpy chyme in his cold stomach and began to flap around like evil bats. Every wrinkle, every crease of the fabric against his skin sent waves of hot and cold rippling through his being, goosebumps prickling down his arms and legs, a cold sweat oozing from the small of his back... ugh... his innards began to execute gymnastics worthy of the Olympic games as he ogled himself in the mirror.

The dress was jet black, with so many ruffles and ribbons it was almost criminal. Long, snow-white sleeves bunched up into flowery bundles at his wrists, each held together by a single inky ribbon that dangled against the backs of his hands like something poetic. A demure cowl covered his shoulders, lacy trim gently kissing his elbows. You could barely notice his lack of feminine assets, although the skirts hung rather limply in the back, betraying his gender. Then again, those hairy legs were kind of incriminating...

His face was definitely a mess, covered in crusty slime and dried-up blood. He looked like a battle-worn dwarf woman about to head to a formal. With a chagrined grimace, Josh spat onto his palm and proceeded to frantically wipe his face off. When his cheeks were clean and pinked from furious rubbing, he peered into the mirror again for inspection and nodded to himself, satisfied. _Much _better. A blithe feeling of bubbly delight percolated up through his innards, filling his head with icy foam. He giggled nervously and struck a pose or two.

_This is stupid, _Joshua thought frantically, _this is stupid, this is stupid...bad! _He ran his boyish hands over the flowing skirts, feeling oh-so-dangerous. _Bad bad bad! D'ohoho... _He smirked evilly at his reflection, batting his eyelashes. _I need some stockings... ooh, ooh, one of those cute hats! Oh, I know, a frilly parasol! I've simply _got _to have one, goodness gracious... _so _cute... eeeee!_

He pressed his hands over his mouth and allowed a small squeal of delight to trickle out, bobbing up and down on his heels. He wheeled around, dead-set on procuring some cute black tights to cover up his hairy calves, some adorable white platform shoes – the shiny enamel kind, of course - and maybe one of those adorable hats if he could find one, or a tiny little crown, or maybe a delicious pair of soft black gloves to cover his hands, (oooh, he'd look so _fancy_) and _definitely_ one of those frilly parasols, when – "_Doof!_"

He bumped into someone.

Ladies and gentlemen, please raise your hand if you saw that coming.

In a frenzied kerfuffle of foofy Gothic-lolita fashion, Princess K and Joshua collided and went tumbling to the ground. Joshua landed on his rear with a bump, but the poor shopkeeper must have twisted her ankle or something – she was wearing these ah-dorable pumps, after all. She crumpled to the floor in an awkward position, wailing shrilly.

"Oh, goodness!" Joshua cried in his shitty 'Bridgette' voice. "E-Excuse me, ma'am... er... I mean..." He shook his head, ears burning, and his voice and mood plunged an octave each. "What, are you blind? Watch where you're going, you old bat!"

He picked himself up and crossed his arms over his beribboned chest, disapproving at full blast. Incidentally, the room's temperature seemed to have abruptly swung from "mildly tepid" to "summer in the Sahara during the worst heat wave ever recorded in human history."

Princess K looked up at him, frightened. "You aren't... you aren't... you aren't..." Her baby blue contact-colored eyes slowly drifted out of focus, a vacant frown tugging at the corners of her worried mouth. A stream of quiet gibberish tumbled from her twitching lips.

Joshua sighed, as if exasperated, sticking a shaky hand into his stringy gray curls and winding his nervous fingers deep into the mess. The room didn't get any cooler – if anything, it seemed to grow ever more warm, particularly around his cheeks. After a moment of embarrassed deliberation, Joshua awkwardly made to help the fallen shopkeeper up – and it was then that he saw the rusty hedge clippers, clutched tightly in a frail, porcelain hand. His lips tightened and he backed away.

Princess K lay there, quivering uselessly for a moment, eyes blank. Then, she hauled herself to her feet, stumbling and teetering as if she were severely inebriated. Breath coming in shaking, jittering gasps. Lips tugging in strange directions. Words forming, soft, like the whispers of spiderlings, words that weren't of any language and yet seemed to hold some kind of meaning.

She erected herself, like a crooked black tower, leering at Joshua through pallid blue contacts. Her irises like sharp points of cracked ice, as piercing as the evil eye. Dark rings under that steely gaze, hollowing out her youthful face with writhing shadow...

She smiled. Her lips twitched, and a ghostly word slithered forth, playing across the frozen wasteland of flesh that was her cold countenance.

"Joshua..."

Speaking of him, Joshua didn't know what to do.

Now, Princess K, in Joshua's opinion, had always seemed a little off her rocker - Lady of the Bunny Realm, and all that. However, in this universe, it was clear that she had left the rocker and skipped off down the rainbow road to La-La Land many months ago. She was no longer simply "quirky" or "kinda batty;" all signs seemed to point to "clinically insane." And that meant unstable. That meant... _un_predictable.

Joshua couldn't decide if he should make a run for it, or if it would be wiser not to make any sudden movements. Those hedge clippers were so dark-brown with rust, they might as well have been coated in potassium cyanide. If he got stabbed, he'd be in for a world ends with you of pure pain, particularly because healing himself was pretty much out of the question. The amount of concentration needed to suck all the blood poisoning out of his ectoplasmic channels? Exhausting.

He assessed the situation, panic beginning to trill against the surface of the calm, cold pool that was his consciousness. Princess K looked uncertain and frightened – did she mean no harm, or did she just want to show him the new mutilation techniques she'd gotten from the torture chambers of the Bunny Realm and having a difficult time deciding which one first? Getting stabbed would be a Bad Thing, and running away would abandon his clothes – his pants, full of all those important things, like his phone and his pins and his gun...

...and he was still in the dress, which made a rapid and clean escape on foot a luxury that he simply did not have access to.

Faced with these forbidding circumstances, Joshua decided to utilize his expert skills at diplomacy. He would try and reason with the Silent Hill mental patient. Yeah. This sounds like a Good Idea, even In Writing. I am Not Being Sarcastic.

Joshua gave the narrator a very discreet and very sharp kick in the omniscience.

Ouch.

"So, Princess K. How are things in the, ehm, Bunny Realm?" Joshua smoothed out his skirt self-consciously, trying his best to look natural and ignore the furious blush sweeping though his skin like a hideous pandemic.

"J-Joshua..." the girl stammered back, eyes drifting up to the ceiling. Above the two, a hanged and mangled M'seur Lapin doll spun despondently, like bloody mistletoe.

Josh clutched the side of his dress like a lifeline with one hand, the other pressed demurely to his breast, which seemed like a feminine thing to do. Hot sparks crackled in the base of his chest, his throat tight. "Yes?"

Princess K muttered something intangible. And then... "You aren't real. You aren't here. But you are. You aren't."

Joshua threaded his thumb through the loop of the big white ribbon decorating his front, not saying anything. He still wasn't that sure if he _should_.

"You're not. But I can. I _can_ see you. You are, but you aren't _here_, but..." She looked down at the hedge clippers quite abruptly, chocolate eyebrows inching steadily together into a perplexed crease. "Where are you, what, are you real, you aren't real, I'm real, She's real, this is real this is..."

"Princess..." Joshua began, but then trailed off, contemplating his words. Could she hear him at all? What was the point?

Cold, icicle-like fingers tightened around the hedge clippers, shivering. "I am... I am... I am... and you are... you are... the royal garments of the Bunny Realm sing your name, they tell me you are a prince, or an angel... a ghost, a wraith, I can't see you, I can, I _can't_, you _are_ real am I real are you I am I want I this. Princess K knows. Princess K knows."

The shopkeeper lifted the hedge clippers in a swift, oily motion, eyes still downcast and frozen in space. She lurched forward.

Joshua jumped back, fear prickling in the back of his back as he moved back, backwards.

"This is real. This is _real_. This _is_ real. Pain is real. Um, h-hurt, okay that's fine that's _fine_ that's that that is. Princess K wants to cut you open, okay?" Winter eyes stabbed up at him, frightened and small and lonely and scared. Her mouth slackened, a glittering strand of diamond drool frosting the twitching corner. "Real people _bleed_. Are you here? Are you _here?_"

"Please, put the hedge clippers down," Joshua said as calmly as he could. For every one of his steps backward, Princess K took one forward. "Princess? Princess, please lower the weapon, uh, while I try to decipher your crazy ramblings and curb the fight or flight response simultaneously...?"

"SHE says SHE is the only one, what are you, what are you, I see Her, you're covered, covered... it's gray, you are a sacrifice," she whimpered, "you aren't supposed to move anymore. Real people, they break when you throw them, they rip when you tear them, they bleed when you cut them. That's real. You aren't real. You aren't here."

_You aren't here_, Joshua repeated mentally. _What – ohh, oh, I see now..._ "No, no I'm not here. I'm from...another world. Okay? Please, don't stab me. I just want to go home, is that okay?"

"No no no, you're like HER, there is only one of HER, SHE will break you and fill you with gray and ash, and, and, Princess K wants you, Princess K wants you, go away go away go away I can't see you."

Chanting feverishly, eyes rolling back, Princess K swung the hedge clippers down and buried them deep in the flesh of her own leg. _Spluch_. She moaned in pleasure, grinning sickly.

Joshua held his breath. "I don't mean any harm, I'm just passing through..."

"You're like them," she whispered, eyes closed. "You're like those clones, those horrible marionettes, they cut Princess K, they cut and they cut and they hurt Princess K, but Princess K always grows back, always grows back..."

The girl ripped viciously at the hedge clippers' handle. After a second of tension, it came out with a wet _shlrk_. As if to illustrate her point, the gaping red wound seemed to close like a mouth.

"Once, I wasn't crazy," she said, sounding almost lucid. "Look at me now, O seraph of the Bunny Realm! The sky is yellow. The grass is dead. The walls are green. The roses are eyes. I can't think anymore, the bugs are in my head, the bugs, I can't get them out..."

"I'm sorry..." Joshua edged backwards, carefully reaching to the side to pick up the bundle of discarded clothing...

She whispered, hoarsely. "Spiders..."

With delicate movements, Joshua tucked his things under one arm and shuffled away from the gibbering maniac.

She was shaking. She was crying. "Get them out...get them out...get them out..."

His footsteps crunched on the shards of glass and uneven hills of discarded clothing; every move sent a whirlwind of dust motes up into the golden air. Every little move felt like a possible trigger. Every little noise felt like it could send Princess K back into homicidal mode. Josh kept his eyes pinned on the girl, warily.

She slumped to her knees, plunging the hedge clippers into her eyes again and again. She kept missing, kept hacking deep into the bone of the eye socket. "Out, out, get them out... p-please... please..."

The boy was almost to the door. Almost... almost...

She crumpled into a tight ball, blood leaking from around her ruined eyes and staining the carpet with haphazard spots, like a decrescendo spilling out of her head...

Just a little farther now...

She screamed.

She screamed a hideous, ear-ripping scream, jumping to her feet and whipping around to face Joshua. "YOU CAN'T LEAVE!" she cried, rivers of hot blood billowing out of her empty, gooey eye-holes, her eyelids, coating her lips and cheeks with a sticky, repugnant mask. It twisted into a horrible smile as the hollows in her eyes ballooned outward, new organs budding and writhing out like clods of squirming bacteria.

She ripped the hedge clippers out of her temple with a spurt of sickening scarlet and charged at Joshua, holding the clippers like a lance -

* * *

There was no time to duck, or to dodge. Not even time enough to scream.

Joshua reeled, stepped back, stumbled, fell to the ground, clothes still clutched in his trembling hands. Flecks of blood splattered his skin, but he wasn't dead.

He hadn't even been scratched.

"Aagh... _aaagh!_" Princess K wailed, tottering backwards, mouth agape in horror. A blue, tattoo-like symbol swirled around her head, and with an eerie cry, turned gold... a Noise, Boss-level.

It was possessing her.

Holding her still.

Joshua scrambled to his feet, not even pausing to contemplate this rare stroke of luck. He just ran for it.

Blindly, ungracefully, tripping over lumped-up shirts and bumping into toppled display racks and running, running, away from that girl, away from that Noise, away from the clippers and the blood, the nauseating, filthy blood...

* * *

Okay, so maybe he freaked out a little.

Joshua pressed himself to the wall of Shibukyu Superstore, breathing heavily, his thoroughly pink face barely visible under the huge pile of clothes he was holding. With a dull noise of relief, he sank to a sitting position and clutched the laundry to his chest, as if it could protect him, somehow. The frothy hem of his dress was now blushing with yellow dust, singing faintly against his skin. And, well, looking down now... his legs looked awfully skinny and strange (not to mention hairy), his delicate ankles almost lost within folds of thick, fuzzy black socks and oversized nice shoes. Sighing, Joshua let the tension spin out of his shoulders in resignment. The sight was strangely crushing.

He leaned back against the building, staring blankly up into the fading honey sky. _I need to get back to Neku quickly, but... like this? I really am pathetic..._

It seemed hopeless for a moment. What, exactly? Just... everything. Everything was so... well, even with all his knowledge of the Game and Composing and the Underground and all the related mechanics, they weren't any closer than when they started.

Maybe if he hadn't kept quiet back there, when he and Neku were alone... then they wouldn't be in this particular mess. Maybe if he had just tried calling Mr. H more... or... or texting him... would that even work, or would it just transmit a mess of Zalgo-esque corrupted characters? Probably the latter, since all eldritch anomalies were simply misplaced beings lost in trans-universal space... or so the theory went.

A faint caw drifted over the wind.

Joshua tightened his lips and looked crossly at the rooftops. _I can't just mope around like this... like Orange Juice-boy. I'll end up a sobbing wreck – and what good does that do? No, I've just got to keep trying. I've got to keep going... I must, for my own sake, and Neku's... oh, hell, let's tack OJ on to that list too, why not._

And so, he began to generate ideas.

_I'm alone now, it's a perfect opportunity to nip back to the motel and send Mr. H a dating request or whatever._ This was a pretty obvious first step. _Then I just have to stall for time... we can't cross paths with those clones any more, not after they 'killed' us. They'll do it again, and this time, they'll do a thorough job of it. Which won't mean much for me, on account of my immortality, but it could potentially result in unpleasant scenarios arguably worse than just plain ol' death. We ought to aim for avoiding all clones, if possible. I should... probably get rid of the dress soon, too._

He scrunched up his face in distaste and set the huge pile of clothes and stuff down (kinda unceremoniously), so that it was easier to stand up.

Another caw, this time closer. Much closer.

Joshua hauled himself to his feet awkwardly, trying to avoid dirtying his skirt more than was necessary, and squinted into the sky. _It's probably just a bird – then again, how many animals have I seen thus far?_

The golden-glass dome above was completely empty. Joshua's foresight prickled angrily – the boy whirled around on impulse.

Hovering above the roof of Shibukyu Superstore was a faint, flickering blue blotch. The Noise from earlier.

He stared at the thing. It seemed to stare back, and Joshua felt the gross sensation of icy claws piercing into his temples.

It began to descend – not in the wild, erratic way chump Noise are wont to, no. This Noise had a plan.

Joshua cringed in disgust, backing away. _My negativity must have attracted it... ugh, it looks _powerful_... bleeh, why are all the Noise popping up NOW?_ Joshua grit his teeth – if that Noise managed to possess him, who knew how badly it could screw things up? It had managed to stop a raging psychopath in her tracks – a psychopath that could, apparently, sense his Composer vibe. And she was a native! With his powers watered down as they were...

The Noise lowered itself until it was hovering at eye-level. It looked like a black tattoo vaguely reminiscent of a stylized bird skull – you could make out what looked like avian eye sockets, and a long, jagged beak. It glowed from behind with a disturbing cobalt light, and like all Noise, gave off a pervasive aura of wrongness. Here was the ultimate culmination of someone's darkest thoughts and emotions – and by the size of the thing, it wouldn't be easily shaken off if it decided it wanted a snack.

Then again, boss Noise didn't typically attack people. They preferred other Noise, since they were easy meals, fortified with concentrated negativity.

"Cannibals! Cannibals everywhere! Good God, do you have a cannibalism _fetish_ or something?" both our Joshua and the readers demanded of the author in perfect tandem.

If I did, chapter twelve would have played out a LOT differently, don't you think?

Anyway...

Joshua felt the familiar writhing in his soul as the Noise approached him – like the red static was being burned deep into the flesh of his brain, as if crimson Noise symbols were being tattooed under his eyelids. It hurt – his mind's eye became a rippling sheet of broiling scarlet, and his thoughts were devoured – all he could see in his head was that searing circle of tribal tattoos. It filled his brain, like a parasite, like something strange and evil and unnatural – which it basically was, but _anyway_.

Normally the approach of a Noise sigil was hardly an endurance test, lasting at most a second or two before battle was initiated – but this was different. The symbol was deliberately taking its time, clearly, almost as if examining the boy... looking him over.

Joshua blinked, rubbing his temple. His eyes felt like TV screens, full of nothing but rust-red static. The wind blew; his skirts rippled around his legs.

With a sharp noise, suddenly the tattoo... unfolded, and the Noise came out.

Joshua's mind suddenly felt blank and empty. He blinked again, slowly coming back to coherence.

Before him was a giant bird (a raptor of some kind, maybe an eagle?) with brilliant orange plumage, violet tattoo-bones, and a surly look to it. Joshua's first thought was that this bird had not been having the best of days – the way it glared at him, with those flickering amber lights in empty sockets... it just looked so _irritated_. Almost like it had been in the middle of typing up a bullshit ad on Gracebook at the behest of its nagging Proxy who then left to get some cheese twists and thanks to his convenient absence unwittingly forced it to live through being ripped apart and digested thoroughly by about five third parties before enough of its Soul was spread out that it was forced to reincarnate into its Noise form after which it then proceeded to flap around searching for its Proxy for the better part of a few hours and thinking it had found him but what a surprise all he got was an asshole wearing girl's clothes but this asshole seemed to be responding to his presence and so therefore could see him and therefore was not a clone and therefore could probably still help it get back to its home world so it could coalesce back into its Composer form and get on with its unlife.

Funny how a single look can say volumes. But...

But that was silly. Noise are just dumb animals!

The bird flew off to a nearby lamppost, perching on the light and ruffling its wings. It studied Joshua from afar, head bobbing up and down like that of an adorable parrot.

"Uh," Joshua said, still frozen in place. His eyebrow was the only thing that had moved, crawling up his forehead like a lint-colored caterpillar. "Hello? I can't fight right now, unfortunately, so if that's what you're looking for... come back some other time."

It looked at him sullenly.

"If you are the Noise form of a Reaper officer, or – perhaps – the Conductor, I would appreciate it if you went back to being a person," Joshua said blankly. He doubted it would happen, anyway – the Noise forms of Reaper Officers are typically anthropomorphic and/or capable of understanding human speech to a limited degree, but are generally so lost within their own darkness that any attempts at conversation result in little more than insane rambling. "I'd like to ask you a question or two."

No response, but the bird looked incredibly exasperated for some reason.

"...Okay then. I'm going to take my leave now... huh? HEY!"

The bird abruptly swooped down from the lamppost and snatched something from Joshua's discarded laundry pile. Sunlight glinted off the orange casing of the most precious object of Yoshiya Kiryu – his dinky cell phone, now imprisoned in the violet talons of a demon eagle.

Joshua's mouth dropped open, jaw dangling freely in the breeze for a moment.

Then...

"I'LL KILL YOU!"

The bird squawked cheekily and flew off. Joshua immediately gave chase, holding his skirts up with one hand and cursing violently.

His laundry pile was left behind. That could wait. This? This couldn't.

He shook his fist at the bird as he ran, face contorted in rage, stumbling through dirty alleyways and dirty side streets – and if they weren't already filthy to begin with, he soiled them with the fountain of black oaths spewing from his mouth. "You BASTARD! How _dare_ you! This is unforgivable! _Absolutely_ – ouch – _unforgivable!_ What gives you the right to – GYAHH, you better not be looking at my photo albums! YOU BETTER NOT – OOOH! OH! OH! YOU DID _NOT_ JUST- Sl-Slow down... damn it, I'll punch you out of the _sky!_ I'll pluck your feathers off one-by-one! I'll _waste_ you! I'll _baste_ you! I'll serve you at Reaper HQ for _Thanksgiving!_ ...Which we would have no reason to celebrate, since we're Japanese! BUT THAT'S IRRELEVANT!" (enraged hair-tearing) "_GET BACK HEEEERE!_"

And so on and so forth.

* * *

Joshua trailed that stupid bird like its own shadow. It was kind of odd, actually - for, despite how many increasingly-elaborate death threats Joshua shrieked into the sky, the bird seemed awfully enthusiastic about the boy following it. In fact... Josh's cute Lolita dress slowed him down often by getting caught on a thorny vine or pile of rusted scrap metal (a surefire indicator that Sho had been here; he left a trail of them in his wake. They were like sign.). Each time, Joshua was forced to drop the chase in order to surgically remove the precious, delicate, ethereally-beautiful fabric from whatever fresh new part of the landscape that had risen to meet him in the throes of battle. The bird, strangely enough, never seemed to take this opportunity to flee the righteous rage of the Composer. In fact, whenever Joshua looked up during the de-snagging process, the bird almost seemed to be – wait for it – _laughing_ at him.

It was a hideous cycle of rage and anger.

Joshua only managed to tear himself free of this cycle and enter Grr-vana by the end of the epic(ally stupid) chase scene. The bird led him through a tangle of alleys and things that grazed the edge of the shimmering, golden force-field that covered the sky and encompassed Shibuya until they reached a fairly familiar place. As he stumbled out from under the vine-snared gap between two buildings, Joshua decided that he didn't know what exactly was so familiar about it, since the ground was entirely covered in rose-vines. Thorny, wild, they pierced through the concrete of the street in writhing, snakelike masses, flowing over the sidewalks and the buildings, dangling from the flickering streetlights, ensnaring the entire street in a thick, angry web of green. Gold roses, the backs of their blooms to him, thrashed around near what was, presumably, the entrance to the area, which was so covered in thick cords of plant-flesh that it was entirely impassable.

Apparently, the bird had led him through a secret entrance. Joshua noticed with a note of interest that each of the golden roses had a golden chump Noise symbol attached to it, hovering erratically and twisting the flower in different directions...

Plants had about the weakest willpower of anything Josh could think of. It made sense, he supposed, that a Noise could make a plant move if it wanted to – but plants didn't exude any negativity, given that they lacked thoughts, so a Noise wouldn't get anything out of the deal, would it? Noise possessed people in order to feed off their negative energy, but even then most Noise didn't even bother, since a possessive Noise was like a shining advertisement for any passing Players. _Chump Noise, single. Seeking: erasure. Looking for a set of partners that can provide. Not interested in long-term engagements._

Anyway, these Noise were certainly intriguing to our Joshua, who was wondering exactly what kind of purpose they served, and why the bird-Noise leading him around seemed like it wanted to avoid being seen by them...

Speaking of which, Birdbrain abruptly folded his wings and compressed into a black symbol again, glowing with that radiant blue glow. Its flight path veered directly into the wall of a nearby building. Joshua could still sense it somewhere inside, lingering, but he couldn't see it any more. Judging from the suddenly static feeling he got, the Noise had stopped moving completely.

It wasn't Erasure, that was certain. The Noise was still there – when Joshua looked at the wall, he could feel it, sitting there, kind of like looking at a block hidden under a blanket. You know it's not moving, but you still know it's there; even though you can't exactly see it anymore, the lump in the blanket tells you all you need to know. Joshua threw a glance at the other Noise, who remained unaware of – or, at least, unconcerned with – his presence.

Pursing his lips with a small "tsk," he hitched up his skirt and began the difficult hike over the thorny hillocks of vines. The going was kind of difficult, as if he were walking over an ocean that had frozen solid in the middle of a hurricane: the vines made pitches and swells like the writhing sea, sometimes rising up to the size of small hills and, in one spot, plunging down into deep holes in the concrete. Joshua's skirts were torn a little and his ankles got awfully scratched up, but for the most part the thorns were too large to do anything but serve as handholds, and occasionally palisades.

After roughly fifteen minutes of negotiating this 100% organic pesticide-free obstacle course, Joshua finally staggered over to the front of the building that Birdbrain had entered. Without the rose-vines there, the journey would have probably taken fifteen seconds. At the most.

Joshua saw that the vines seemed most desperate to plug this particular area. Tendrils pierced through the shattered remains of the floor-length windows, jammed through the entry proper in such quantity and thickness that the frame of the door had widened and eventually splintered in half. However, there was a small gap, about two feet or so, between the waterfall of vines and the top of the broken door. Since the vines were sloping downwards, it was easy enough for Joshua to bundle up his skirts and gently slip down into the building, an experience comparable to going down one of those tacky slides meant for preschoolers.

Golden shafts of light illuminated broad strokes of hazy honey air, setting half of the vine-washed interior aglow. The edges of large orange discs caught the light, blushing like polished brass; the back wall shone warmly, almost like a hearth. The other half of the room was cut deeply with purple and green shadows, as thick and dark as ink. Peeling off like a rind of rice paper, the wallpaper was yellowed and brittle, and the exposed plaster looked hideously moldy in places, like a multitude of pipes had broken. Blinking, Joshua smoothed out his skirt in a somewhat-futile gesture, squinting at those weird plastic discs – they were poking out of the sea of vines, just barely, like hemispherical shark fins, and – and then it hit him. They weren't just discs, they were tables. Overturned orange tables, completely embedded in a meter-thick layer of gray-green lush.

Orange tables... Joshua looked up, taking in the vine-ensnared fan, the faded, graying mural painted on the once-crisp walls, the toppled metal husks of coffee machines. This was WildKat, or whatever was left of it.

Wadding his skirt up in a bundle and tucking it under his arm, Joshua stooped over and picked his way through the vines, scanning the ground in the visual sense as he looked for clues – what exactly happened here? It looked almost like Pamela had attacked this place. He made his way to where the counter was, or whatever was left of it – ribs of twisted metal, glass shards embedded in vines – and peeked over the edge. The ground was covered in a puddle of gray sludge, which Joshua supposed was the same digestive juice he'd been swimming in earlier. He decided walking any further would endanger his cute dress, not that it was especially cute anymore.

Besides, there was nothing back there – the coffee machines, being made of metal, were largely unaffected by the acid, but the reek of skunk-like aromas and vomitous bile said the coffee beans had not been so lucky. The back door had melted away completely, leaving a giant hole fringed by weird colors and the faint hiss of foam as the acid worked its magic. The corroded gap in the wall revealed a wall of oozing vines – perhaps Pamela had some kind of a grudge against Spartan beds and huge-ass piles of coffee beans? That was all that was back there, as far as Josh knew.

_Or maybe..._

Joshua winced. Where was Mr. H, anyway? He wouldn't have just... _abandoned_ his beans. Even if the place was burning down around him and five seconds away from being completely demolished by a gas explosion, he _still_ wouldn't have left his beans. Pamela had flooded the backroom with acid, it looked like – maybe she had trapped him in there, grabbed him with vines while he was fondling his beans or something, and just digested the _heck_ out of him? That didn't really make much sense to Joshua, since he knew Mr. H could have easily escaped with his Angel powers, unless...

Unless there was a _reason_ he didn't leave?

Joshua scrunched up his nose and turned away from the counter, surveying the floorspace of WildKat's remains. Something caught his eye, just barely poking out of the carpet of vines, like a gunmetal-colored triangle.

The boy scrambled over to it, nearly tripping on a table (that sounds so silly out of context). Dropping into a cute little crouch, he gave the object a medium rare once-over with a side of scrutinizing. It appeared to be the end of some kind of handle. Next to it was a small, black pin. And next to that...

"Ah!" Joshua exclaimed triumphantly, picking up his phone with delicate reverence. "Hee, hee..."

After cooing and gushing gooey love-butter all over his phone's tacky orange casing, Joshua's interest gradually turned back to the other, stranger objects.

With a white and gray tattoo emblazoned on its glossy surface, the black pin stood out: a stylized eagle, wings flared and beak open wide, as if caught in the act of practicing its murderous killing scream. The Noise from earlier, obviously – compressed into a pin?

Intrigued, Josh cradled it in his hand, examining it. It shivered softly against his palm.

This Noise was clearly not like its ilk, if it was both powerful enough and willing to make itself into a psych, sacrificing mobility and basically everything that made the Noise dangerous in the process. Almost definitely a sentient being.

Joshua pocketed the pin, his curiosity continuing to climb. The Noise had led him to WildKat and condensed itself into a pin – but why _here,_ specifically? The boy's eyes slid to the goofy little triangle poking out of the greenery, and his foresight prickled warmly.

Was he supposed to find this, uh... whatever this was? Joshua sniffled, because his nose was starting to itch a little, and tugged on the exposed part of the handle. When it didn't budge, Josh's creepy eyes narrowed into creepy slits – no. This would not do.

The following twenty minutes were spent tugging fruitlessly at the stupid thing, trying to unearth it from its verdant prison. He tried yanking, he tried twisting, he tried prying and gripping and heaving and ho-ing. He tried begging, he tried pleading. He tried to bargain with the thing, to talk some sense into it, to persuade it. He tried kicking it. He tried punching it, and then tried nursing his bruised knuckles. He tried glowering at it from afar, he tried a poorly-remembered chant from an H.P. Lovecraft book he'd read. He even tried bribing it with promises of hot, greasy ramen, purely on the basis that it usually worked on his Reapers. His efforts were wasted, since by the end of it the handle was no less tightly-wedged than it had been and Joshua was the definition of exhausted.

He slumped against one of the plastic tabletops, panting a little. _Ugh, what a bother._ His breath seemed to catch in his lungs, as if there had been some kind of wet, grimy hook installed in his trachea without his knowing. Joshua continued to glower at the thing, wondering what could be so important about a stupid handle. More importantly, what was the handle attached to? It was wedged too deeply in the vines to tell.

_But I want to _know! His innate curiosity was throwing a hissy fit.

The boy felt an itching pressure build in his nose, all of a sudden. "Ah... _ahhh_..."

He closed his eyes and the lining erupted from his lungs. "_CHOO!_"

With a beleaguered sniffle and a dreary wipe of the eyes, Joshua looked up again – only to see the rose-vines recoiling in horror, thrashing around like they were covered in some sort of corrosive acid. "Oh, come off it," Joshua griped. "My sneezing isn't _that_ gross." He thought of the cold medicine that had been boiled away in the Pamela Pit, sniffling sadly.

About then it occurred to him that the handle he'd been trying so hard to gank was completely exposed. The vines that had once imprisoned it were now flailing around uselessly, exactly like Shiki Misaki. His eyes a-streaming, Joshua crawled over on his knees, grasped the handle of the thing, and plucked the strange object out of the ground like the sword from the stone.

The handle was only the top handhold of a peculiar object, heading off a long, almost luminously-white rod. At the end of it gleamed an inky-black box-type thing.

It was a weed whacker.

Or more specifically, a vine whacker. Joshua placed the hefty object in his lap, turning it over and examining the underside of the boxy motor-case thing. Two sharp, scythe-shaped blades, as black as obsidian and as iridescent as hyper-reflective sunglasses, stuck out from the motor like the blades on a jet turbine. With a small smirk of approval twisting his lips in devilish delight, Joshua recalled that he had seen one of these bad boys once before, at Mallvana. The Weedfucker 3000 model, if his memory served. The Angel working the demo booth had demonstrated on a copse of holy oak trees, which had been quite promptly converted into holy playground mulch.

Emblazoned on the side of it was a logo of an extended wing, enveloped in a totally badass swathe of crimson and cobalt flame. Next to the logo was the name of the beast itself: PANTHERA VENGEANCE.

Yes.

Joshua was suddenly overcome with the incredible desire to break something. Anything would do. He just wanted to break it, and revel in the wreckage. Fingers trembling with overly excess amounts of excitement, he grasped the ripcord of the thing and gave it a smart pull. The motor roared to life, like the bloodthirsty murdercries of a lion and a tiger locked in mortal combat and punching galaxies at each other while on fire.

_Hell_ yes.

He grabbed PANTHERA VENGEANCE by the two handles and clambered sloppily to his feet, holding it like a claymore. With a glint of destructive fire sparking in his eye, he brought his growling weapon down in a crazy swing – the weight of it was an alien sensation to him, and it kind of threw him off-balance, and instead of an experimental swing he wound up cleaving a table in two like a total hardass.

Seriously, the blades ripped through that garbage like a hot knife through butter. Room-temperature butter, to be precise. Like, not even a little cold. Or hard. Soft butter. The proverbial butter referred to here was incredibly soft.

Joshua's eyes grew wide and his grin wider as he surveyed the damage – VENGEANCE had gnawed through that industrial plastic like some kind of ravenous hellhound that dined exclusively on plastic for some reason. A flash of violent madness illuminated his countenance, deigning that more experiments were necessary.

One moment he was standing on a pile of vines. Then – s_nap SNICK shlock shlock shlock – _suddenly, Yoshiya Kiryu was up to his ankles in garden salad.

...Well, _schucks!_

Turning VENGEANCE off, he clasped the weapon in his hand, running his finger down the iridescent blade and smiling the smile he had smiled when he had calmly told Megumi that he was about to blow everything to bits. His creepy eyes were creepier than ever, and his grin was equal parts "diabolical mastermind" and "kid with a cool new toy."

Things were definitely about to get so crazy. Like, really, really crazy and intense and stuff. With a weapon like _this_, no army of clones could stand in his way. No vine could ever obstruct his path. All that stood before him would cower at his tiny feet or fall where they stood, splattering all over the ground in a hail of tiny pieces.

He dicked around with his weed whacker for a few minutes when he suddenly realized that Neku had been laying completely naked in a slimy acid-filled plant anus for about an hour and forty-five minutes.

...Whoops.

* * *

**A/N: **how the hell does one "kip a swear word"

I seriously don't know? :/

Anyway I was gonna say something but I forgot.

Dang, do you people want to see long endnotes or do you not care? I can't think of much to gab about.

I mean... well I went to Portland. It looked exactly like I had just jumped into the Twilight movie. I am dead serious. The sky was gray and the green was really really green and everything else was kinda blue.

(Oh and also – the clam chowder (yyyyyeesssss!) and legit ramen they had in the supermarket was really tasty. Did you know – legit ramen tastes like LIQUID STEAK yeah I now know why that one idiot orange ninja likes it so much.

So I went home and made my own legit ramen! It was incredibly bland because I didn't have any soy sauce or animal flesh to put in it but I'm sure you don't care – I didn't and it was STILL AWESOME AND VERY LEGITIMATE, seriously screw maruchan or whatever those cockamamie instant noodle maker packet things are called, they are NOT VERY LEGIT IN MY BOOK

now, if only I had a dumb bandanna on my head, the experience would be COMPLETE)

It was obscenely pretty too. Gosh it looked like a scene from that old BBC thing about Walking with Dinosaurs. Complete with dripping moss and ferns everywhere. We went on a hike, and I kept expecting to trip over some Diplodocus eggs or something...

I was glad about all the rain because A) I like rain and B) where I live, there has been endless not-rain all over

it's like a monsoon of dry all up in this location

siighh


	20. In which Lids are Flipped

**_JOSHUA TRIPS_**

CHAPTER OH MY GOD _TWENTY CHAPTERS OH MY GOOOD!_: IN WHICH NEKU LAYS AROUND AND DOES NOTHING

The Story So Far: Joshua is bumbling around Shibuya on a LaundryQuest, or he should be; however, he's noticed some interesting things about the Noise in this world. Meanwhile, Neku is lying alone and naked in a lubed-up plant sphincter, submitting prayers to every god, spirit and yokai in a ten-mile radius that OJ doesn't wake up. Because he's naked. And that would be bad. You know, if OJ tried to crawl out the tunnel that his butt happens to be blocking. "Oh, I'm sorry, is this your ass? Sorry... um..."

Rating: Rated T for Too many Sweet Transvestites (from Transsexual, Transylvania)

OF NOTE IN THIS CHAPTER: Joshua flips his lid while Neku and OJ do NOTHING!

Genre: Parody/Adventure

* * *

Even though he had reminded himself of his purpose, Joshua couldn't resist dicking around a little more. The weed whacker was like an extension of his arm – as if it were made for him, almost. It hummed brightly in his grip, and when he brought it slicing through a thick patch of vines, well... the vines practically jumped out of the way, leaving a disgusting canyon in the organic carpeting. It was incredibly satisfying.

And what, exactly, was so disgusting about a bunch of slashed vines? Well, the gashes left in the flora wept milky secretions all over the place. It was almost disturbingly Freudian. That is, Joshua might have credited the semi-viscous, white substance leaking out of the phallic tentacles whenever he "slashed" them as a sight worthy of Freud's immediate attention, if Freud hadn't been full of misogynistic shit. And long-dead.

As it happened, Joshua was Forever Jung.

"Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud are not the only psychologists ever, you know," Joshua sighed, carving a smiley-face into WildKat's wall with ferocious hacking motions. "It seems like all teenagers only know the two - Team Jung-cob! Team Freud-ward! God, it's like _Twilight_."

I just wanted to use that joke, okay? Psychoanalyze how you must.

To anyone else, he would have appeared as a total, raving psychopath with a fist full of pogo stick and a head full of empty, but you see, there was a method to his madness. (For once.) Weed whackers are hardly a conventional weapon, and downtown Tokyo harbors hardly any yards to speak of, let alone any weeds for whacking. Heck, weed whackers are meant for landscaping! The only landscaping whatsoever in Shibuya was confined to Miyashita Park, a place Joshua did not care to frequent because he found the sight of the daisies and the scent of the lavender plants absolutely abhorrent. Suffice it to say that Joshua wanted to get a bit of practice in before he left the fairly quiet zone of WildKat. He didn't want to screw up royally when it counted, did he, now?

He took a step back to admire his smiley-face, which looked less like a Wal-Mart icon and more like – well – a shredded pile of greenish, moldy grilled chicken, oozing with vanilla yogurt long past its prime, with a dollop of banana here and there. It just had this mutilated, sickly vibe to it, as if it were a circle of throbbing gashes in veiny, green corpse meat, every festering wound weeping thick, creamy trails of pus over-

"Yuck," snapped Joshua. "What were you expecting, Norman Rockwell? I am but a _man_."

[Insert "well, girly-boy" joke here.]

"I'm not going around with the intent to perform delicate plastic surgery. This isn't Nip/Tuck. Mutilating everything is kind of the _point_." Joshua huffed, turning the weed whacker off and impaling it in the ground. He was probably just miffed about my jab at his piss-poor art skills. Sorry, Joshua.

He did not respond to my apology, instead electing to sit down on the rubbery carpet and contemplate his task: the seemingly impossible-to-complete mission of getting him and Neku some clothes.

_I want to get the UGharmony deal out of the way first_, he thought. _Pants come _after_ our eventual rescue._ _Speaking of pants..._ he glanced down at his foofy Lolita skirt, adorned with lacy white ribbons and all sorts of gorgeous little frivolities._ I should probably change out of this. _He smirked. _...Eventually. _

Joshua turned a critical eye to his "smiley-face" - the milky goo was still oozing out of the gashes, but it seemed to be becoming more viscous over prolonged exposure to the air, almost like tree sap would. He reached over and delicately slipped his finger into a nearby glob of the stuff, grimacing; it had the consistency of tacky glue and kind of throbbed against his finger, which was really gross.

_Great, now we're going to get covered with plant spunk, too. Sigh. I should have expected this, given the large amounts of unnecessary fanservice permeating this fanfiction, as well as the fact that _Pamela is a hermaphrodite._ Duuhhh. What's next? Naughty plant tentacles? Wait... _Joshua scowled and hauled himself to his feet, brushing imaginary dirt off of his dress. He pulled the weed whacker out of the ground with a wet slurping sound and held it at the ready, lips pursed thoughtfully. _...Naaah, those dinky little creepers weren't nearly... um, invasive enough to count._

Allow the author to point out that Joshua was just being pessimistic, here. The author is aware that plants do not have seminal fluid. Just stamen-al fluid. Which is not fluid. It is pollen.

This white stuff just looked incredibly questionable, and if Joshua happened to face-plant (geddit) into the stuff and then blunder into Neku, unfortunate conclusions would be drawn - "WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG – oh. _I _see. You _pig_."

_Tissues would be helpful. ...God. Damn. Gypsies. I am going to just stop thinking._ Joshua rolled his eyes at the incredibly stupid situation and wriggled up the slope of vines that covered WildKat's exit, clawing his way into the outside world.

Joshua stood now on a hill of writhing vines which looked more pale and golden than the bloated gray-green tendrils they actually were. He supposed that this was due to the sun setting, its final flares of light fanning out into the sky as the black teeth of the city skyline bit into it, bleeding a brilliant corona that was hard to look at. Squinting and sniffling, the boy let go of one weed whacker handle so he could shield his eyes from the luminous mess.

The Eagle badge, pinned to Joshua's frilly cowl, caught the fading golden rays of sunlight and shone brilliantly. Joshua tapped it, thoughtfully, with his stubby fingernail. _Aquila Cantus? _With a note of distaste, he noticed that the gorgeous froth of white lace tied around his wrist was kind of limp and yellowed with innocuous plant lubricant. The cuts on the back of his hand hurt, too. Joshua sighed, frustrated.

He stood there a moment longer, enjoying the warm breeze on his damp, clammy skin or something. Skirts ruffling around his ankles, silken strands of ashen gold hair (turned "just gold" by the sunset) stirring in the wind, nose leaking a stream of beige mucus, he wondered how Neku was faring, stuck in a quivering plant sphincter as he was. He leered dramatically into empty space, exuding a ridiculous and unnecessary aura of melodramatic poignancy as he mulled it over.

_He'll be fiiiiiine_, Joshua thought, smirking._ Just fiiiiine._

Then, he fired up the weed whacker and set about "landscaping" his way through those stupid vines.

* * *

Meanwhile, off in a giant plant sphincter...

Neku was gripping the convulsing muscular walls with all his might. It kept trying to evict him from the premises, probably on account of the kneecaps agitating the thing's tubing, but Neku was having none of it. He flat-out refused to be violated by those cheeky-looking creepers. NEVER AGAIN.

A single tear jacked out of the corner of a somber blue eye. How low he had sunken.

The poor guy dug his sharp kneecaps ever deeper into the rippling green flesh, cursing under his breath. Green tendons dug into his sides, slippery slime coursed down his bare back in scummy rivers. With a groan, Neku turned his eyes to the sky and cursed Yoshiya Kiryu, Composer of Shibuya, with all of his might.

There would be hell to pay for this. Oh, yes, Joshua would_ rue_ the day he decided to be nice and cooperative for once and go along with Neku's ridiculous desire to play hopsco-

"Wait, don't tell me this is MY fault!" Neku cried, spitting out slime. "_Pooey!_ Dammit, Joshua, hurry_ UP..._"

* * *

Cut to forty minutes later.

The sky was dark as burnt amber, starless. The streetlights set the pavement aglow with a bronze luminosity, and the neon signs that hadn't been mercilessly ravaged by a bunch of cannibal spider-men were radiating dim and dirty flickers of once-vibrant color. Most of the larger buildings seemed to be off the power grid, for the looming spire of 104 and even Q-floor were completely drenched in burnt sienna shadows, looking like gloomy limestone monoliths strewn about a ruined wasteland.

This was incredibly off-putting to the Composer of Our Shibuya, the one that was chaos and bright lights and people and motion and noise; the cacophonous rumble of the city was etched deep into his Soul, his body was practically woven out of the shopping centers and advertising and cutesy vending machines. For him, a Shibuya that was silent and overgrown was like a person with a squid for a head: bizzare and unnerving.

But enough with the florid descriptions. You get the picture.

Joshua currently crouched in a darkened doorway, observing the Pig Sigil Motel with a critical eye. He was hiding below a dingy blue sign – it read DR * DON and oozed kawaiisa – and naught of him could be seen from the street, except for the predatory gleam of his glistening purple irises.

Quickly, he glanced at his phone – the Eiken background lit up his face with an incriminating light, but it was necessary to check the time. The Sanrio-pink digits of his clock informed him that it was currently 7:40 PM – almost two hours till Collective Clone Consciousness Collapse. Joshua couldn't wait that long – Neku was _waiting_. The poor Proxy, every part of his personage was probably pruned up to a positively preposterous point – Josh tried not to think about that too hard. Instead, he snapped his phone shut and disapproved of the Motel from across the way.

He took a deep breath. Okay. He just had to nip in there without getting seen by clones, fire up the crappy laptop without being seen by clones, send Mr. H a luscious love letter describing Jessica's creamy loins in florid detail without being seen by clones, possibly include a passage that illustrated whatever lofty degree "she" pined away for him (a nauseating task) or something, without being seen by clones, and then get back out again... without being seen by clones.

Clones, a group which included that damned receptionist. Joshua ground his teeth, grumbling. He'd known from the start that guy would be nothing but a pain in the booty.

He gripped the weed whacker tightly in his left hand, contemplating the situation. The rear of the motel was, of course, open to the air, but you couldn't get back there unless you went through the lobby. It seemed like a fatal flaw in the design – suppose there was a _fire __in that lobby?_ - but then again, the motel itself seemed like a hastily-slapped-on addition to Dogenzaka Hill, so maybe it was to be expected. Joshua frowned. The Legend of the Pig Sigil Motel was not exactly relevant to the plot, but the fact remained that it just made things inconvenient for him. How the heck could he infiltrate the godforsaken place unseen if the receptionist had a full view of all entrances from his stupid desk?

Suddenly, an incredibly obvious solution revealed itself to him.

_Suppose I just... walk in there? _Joshua blinked, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth._ I look different enough from this morning that... supposing I don't linger around for too long... they probably shouldn't be able to recognize me right off the bat. I'll have to make this an in-and-out affair, though. _He ran a finger down his skirt-covered knee delicately, enjoying the electric sensation that spidered up his arm. _Cross-dressing is ALWAYS the answer, hehe._

Slowly, he rose to his feet. Propping the weed whacker on his shoulder as if it were a baseball bat, Joshua stepped boldly out of the shadows, sauntering across the street.

He approached the Pig Sigil Motel, his mind already preparing a cover story of sorts – looking for a safe place to rest before shutdown, accidentally scarred a few of Pamela's sacred what-have-yous, malicious Josh pack after him because of it, seeking forgiveness and safe harbor... etc., etc.. Maybe He Tripped on his way out of the mass congregation earlier, falling down in the slime, and everybody was mad at him for it. Whatever. Cover stories tended to work themselves out with Joshua. Maybe he was just a natural con man or something. Smirking to himself at the thought, Josh elbowed his way through the door. And stopped.

Cover story or not, Joshua was simply not prepared for the grisly scene that awaited him. He could barely process it – suddenly paralyzed by the sight, he could only stare. Sure, he'd seen his share of gory shenanigans, but nothing quite on this scale. Okay, blowing Neku's gray matter out onto the sidewalk was pretty nasty, but this, _this_ made Neku's grody bullet wound look like a paper cut.

A mangled array of body parts scattered the floor – at least four feet, two arms – staining the already disgusting burgundy carpet to an even further degree. They were not so much severed as "gnawed off," as if a starving, rabid Rottweiler had been introduced to tender flesh for the first time in weeks. Bone shards here, gobs of shredded fat there, a curled-up hand with the nails ripped out bleeding all over the fake plant in the corner. Look, a calf with the kneecap peeled out – and over on the couch, a pile of bloody teeth.

Splayed shamelessly atop the reception desk, Recepshua moaned into the bleeding hollows of a limbless, broken torso, rocking back and forth with ecstasy. He plunged his hand into a gaping wound carved into the torso's side, ripping out handfuls of viscera, slowly tearing the flesh open with soft, moist noises. The clone threw his head back as he dug his fingers into the muscles covering the ribcage, arched his back and groaned with pleasure. Panting. He dug his fingernails into the blood-smeared pectorals, crying a name softly.

"NeKU, n-NEku... _hAa_... _hAAa_..."

A decapitated head lay on the ground near our Joshua's foot, staring blankly ahead – its eyes had been roughly clawed out of the sockets, the cheeks and jaw plucked off. Most of the flesh of the face had been peeled away, and its crown was completely scalped, but the thick, black eyebrows and flattish nose identified it as a Neku head. The way those eyebrows were arched up in surprise, what was left of the face frozen in a look of intense agony...

Recepshua continued to jerk back and forth, the filthy desk creaking under his weight. His mouth was wider than his head, teeth coated with rust-red blood. Hunched over, white and sanguine-splattered, like a porcelain spider, gobbets of flesh sticking to his arms, cooing. He opened that mouth obscenely wide, like a snake might, pressed his head to the Neku's ventral cavity – with a series of small pops and tears, he sheared a mouthful of meat from the prone torso's chest.

"So... sO GoOD tO me... rai... _aaAh_... _aAaaH_... pAMelA... pa... mu... muu... _hhahaa_..."

Blood ran down his chin like sticky water. His hair was matted with it. Obscene. He pressed himself deep into the Neku's body, winding his arms through the bleeding, scratched intestines, thrusting his hips against the counter and moaning incoherently.

"PaapPApAmeLA pAMEla NEKu... nEkU... _haa_... nEku... raaiiii... raiii... rairairairairairai- gyaaa_aaah~!_"

The white frame shuddered with pleasure. Talons, gripping the white, bloated colon until it split at the seams, feces oozing out of the bleeding cracks and dirtying his fingers, the flesh. It was wrong. Disgusting.

Joshua wrenched his eyes away from the sight, but there was nowhere to _look_. The walls and floor were splattered with blood and bile, the chewed-up body parts fresh and moist with the smell of blood...

Blood...

_Blood_...

Oh. The shock was beginning to wear off. His cold, atrophied heart began to spasm painfully in his chest, the wings of panic taking flight in his ribcage.

Slowly but surely, Joshua began to flip the fuck out.

"Raiiii... raiii... raaaaiiii..."

Blood was disease. Sick, filthy, disgusting.

The moaning of the clone continued, rising in an orgasmic high. Filthy. _Filthy._

"Rai..."

That hospital – he –

Now, only ectoplasm flowed through Joshua's arteries. He was dry. Blood, once a thing so precious, a thing so dangerous and poisonous – he was dry. His hand flew to his temple as his vision began to swim. _I'm clean, I'm clean..._

"Neku, neKU, nEkkun... rhyrhy..."

He felt sick, dizzy.

"EhyRHyraIRHyrai_rhy_ -"

The clone's toes curled, legs kicking in quivering spasms – it buried its head in the mutilated Neku's dirty, pallid organs and let loose a blood-curdling scream, quakes of joy racking its body, grinding its featureless pelvis into the moldy countertop -

"_Rhaaaiiii... aaaaiiiiime...!_"

Joshua felt gravity pitch beneath him, and he fell to his knees. Shaking.

Blood, blood everywhere... _filthy..._

_It's filthy, get it out of me..._

_Get it out..._

_I don't want to die..._

His vision swam with red spots, buried memories trying to claw their way to the surface. He shoved them away from his consciousness furiously, that hideous mockery writhing on the countertop filling his mind's eye with hatred._ No-_ _stop _touching_ him, stop..._

He screwed his eyes shut, bile rising in his throat. The blood, the body parts, the guts and the grime splattered everywhere – it was just too much, too much to take - he thought, for a moment, that he might pass out – and then he fell forward onto his hands, trembling all over. A warm, black wetness squished out of the carpet, staining his hands a bright, ugly red –

No –

No- not now, not this... not _this_... please...

He felt his stomach lurch, and everything went black -

* * *

_No. _

_No, I will NOT faint._ He ground his teeth together, even as the dull fingers of unconsciousness tried to drag him down into darkness._ I refuse to faint._

_I am the master of my eyes._

_People only see what they want to see. _

_I can change my perception._

_I am the master of my eyes._

When he ripped his eyes open again, he was staring at puddles of butterscotch and sprinkles.

The severed limbs were almost plastic in their cleanliness, bleeding that sweet, sticky butterscotch. For his ice cream.

Yes. He could deal with this.

He reached out with a shaking hand, grabbed the weed whacker – when had he dropped it? - and pulled the ripchord, trembling, trembling, like a frail little leaf in a hurricane.

The guttural roar of the motor pierced through his sickened haze, lucidity smacking him in the face like a slimy herring. With an enraged howl he sprung off the ground, flying at the clone -

The thing was so deeply lost in its own pleasure that it had failed to notice Joshua's arrival at all. The boy slashed at its flank, viciously – with a ripping noise, the white flesh tore, sweet-smelling butterscotch tumbling out in a delicious torrent. The thing cried out in pain and terror, whipping around to face this threat – but it was so deeply wound in the Neku's organs that it had effectively tied itself up. It began to convulse as Joshua stabbed into it with an almost animal rage, plunging the spinning blades into its soft flank again and again – it thrashed around, trying to rip its sharpened claws free of the knotted viscera it had wound them into -

Joshua shrieked again, barely seeing. His entire being was the motion, the cutting, the hurting – he wanted to hurt that thing, he wanted to _hurt_ it -

His entire existence became nothing but the motion, the motion of driving the whirling scythes deep, deep into the clone's ivory meat and ripping them out again – and again – and again -

The clone cried and sobbed – it wasn't activated anymore, those eyes weren't black, but indigo – it cried and cried and gnawed at its own arm in a desperate bid for freedom, tearing hunks of flesh away.

The force of Joshua's attack pushed the thing off the counter – it fell behind the desk with a dull _thud_, brutally entangled with the torso, wailing pitifully. Joshua jumped after it, smashing the merciless blades into the clone's face again and again, hearing nothing but the roar of ectoplasm in his ears, seeing nothing but butterscotch and butterscotch and butterscotch and –

He stabbed that thing. He mauled it. He drove PANTHERA VENGEANCE into the clone's head again and again until the thing's anguished cries diminished to quiet, sticky gurgling, until the spasming limbs twitched no more – and still he struck it, until it was barely recognizable as anything but a pile of caramel-colored sweetness.

Finally, he stopped.

Recepshua lay in a mangled, hideous mess. Butterscotch bled stickily into the carpet – chunks of caramel splattered the ground where its head had once been. Sprinkles dusted the gory, delicious mess of mangled confections, like shards of a tiny, sugary rainbow. Joshua giggled, a terrified, pitiful sound. The world seemed to spin around him, whizzing past in a colorful blur.

He saw peppermint-swirl bone, cracked and laying in shards; saltwater taffy brains, sticking to his now-colorful blade; Dentyne Ice teeth laying hither and thither; buttercream frosting hair splayed across the filthy carpet in dirty swirls.

He saw candy and cake and ice cream and twizzlers and gummy worms, he saw gumdrops and lollipops and cotton candy and – wait, cotton candy was disgusting.

Plunging and wavering, his vision flickered in and out - Joshua blinked, horrified, gripped with vertigo. He backed away, swallowing hard.

The candy was dirty – swarming with cockroaches. Maggots. Bloated, seething, pallid larvae, blind to all but the rancid meat they writhed in -

Wait -

_Wait _-

He blinked again, and the bloody, grisly scene swam back into focus.

Brains, scrambled like eggs. Blood soaking into the carpet. Ruddy flesh torn and shredded and flayed –

He couldn't look, he backed away, he bumped into the desk and fell down, shaking. _No, no, there's blood everywhere, it's so dirty..._

A whimper escaped his quivering lips, he became aware of the tears coating his cheeks. He was crying? _Crying?_ A sob wrenched itself from his choked throat. _What the hell, Yoshiya – no, stop this – stop this at once-_

_Oh, oh no... M-my dress. It's all gross and dirty now..._ Joshua sobbed again, touching the fabric with almost childlike idiocy. _No! I don't cry! What- get a grip, will you? Stop it! Stop -_ He **hiccupped** painfully as he came back to his senses, disgust sharpening his thoughts until they were like blades, stabbing into the back of his forehead. _Oh no... no, why do I _care_... I shouldn't be _crying_ over this! Ugh... I don't cry! I don't! I refuse-_

He covered his face with his hands and burst into tears, inexplicably. Helplessly.

Poor guy.

He cried for almost a full minute, his narrow chest heaving and aching. Ashen eyebrows twisted up angrily, chin twitching and quivering uncontrollably. It was almost as if his body was reacting in place of his mind, since Joshua was far too mature for this kind of frivolous babyishness. Mentally. When nothing but shuddering throbs of hiccups and puffy eyes remained, Joshua ground his knuckles into his eyes and murmured to himself.

"That isn't me," he whispered, hoarse. "It's o-only a (hic) deranged clone that happens to look like me. You need to calm down, Joshua. Just (hic) calm down. It's not you. No reason to flip your lid,_ damn_... You wouldn't do that. You w-wouldn't (hic) do that..."

When Joshua opened his eyes again, he felt much better.

Now, Joshua never cried, ever. He wasn't exactly sure why his tear ducts had chosen that particular moment to explode, and he was hot with embarrassment and anger because of it. Yes, he was furious with himself for breaking down like a blubbering little infant – or worse, Orange Juice-tan, yuck – but still... he felt _better_.

"Ugh, the idiocy is astounding..." Joshua wiped his eyes, crossly. "OJ must be rubbing off on me, unfortunately."

He looked at the bloody carcass again, sniffling weakly. Hmm. Perhaps a bit of humor might neutralize the situation...?

"...Bleah. Well, I guess that takes care of _him,_" He giggled – for the record, it sounded kind of forced. "Neku was right, I _am_ a psycho. Ugh..."

He felt nauseous, so he gathered himself up - skirts, weed whacker and all - and carefully hauled himself over the reception desk, sniffling.

"This is (hic) ridiculous. I don't cry," Joshua said to himself, wiping his nose. "Stupid night terrors, stupid cannibals... _buh_, I don't have time for this!"

Picking his way through the many messily mangled body bits besmirching the already sufficiently smirched carpet, Joshua stomped over to the stairway and began his ascent.

* * *

Now, Room 37 was near the end of a hallway flanked with doors. Behind each of those doors issued soft, wet sounds – sucking, ripping, the disgusting pops and snaps of moist and juicy flesh tearing and the dull crunch of bones snapping. The hallway yawned before Joshua like the gullet of a great beast, stretching into filthy blackness. And so, as he padded along, it was really no surprise that Joshua felt a trill of nausea slither around in his stomach like a frigid, bloated worm. He trusted that the clones were so deeply entrenched in their ecstatic eating that they wouldn't hear him pass, and if they did, they probably wouldn't pay much attention.

His soft footsteps were drowned out by the creaks and the cannibals' slurps, so he wasn't too worried about being heard. He was still on edge, anyway. Why wouldn't he be?

Joshua made it to Room 37 unscathed, tried to open the door.

It was locked.

Panic stabbed at his guts. "What the -" He cursed some goofy G-rated Angel curse and frantically rattled the doorknob. "Oh, _come on_..."

The dirty thing wouldn't budge. Great! Joshua quickly threw a glance down the hallway, with its soft noises and stained shadows. He grit his teeth – _Wait! The master key..._

Of course, Recepshua would have had one. He ran the establishment, after all. Joshua's mouth twisted into a hard smirk – well, that was one less hoop to jump through. He gently laid the weed whacker against the door and darted down the hallway like a scared little ghost, hoping to make this a quick detour. Let's be honest, here: it was much easier to negotiate the stairwell sans the clunky landscaping device.

As he stumbled down the stairs, something happened – the hem of his dress got caught under his gigantic shoe and he tripped, thumping down a flight of steps like Thor, the god of thunder, out for a morning stroll.

BUMP BONK THUMP THONK-

He whacked his head against a potted plant. As luck would have it, this action was enough to inspire the idiotic thing to tip over and shatter into a million terra-cotta pieces, the plant itself reduced to a hunk of pretty plastic buried under a dismal clod of fake dirt. Joshua winced, rubbing his poor, fluffy head. "Ack..."

There was dead silence for a moment. The thing that had been crawling after him on the ceiling had retreated back to the shadows, eight legs twitching nervously. All was still.

Joshua pushed himself off the ground, gathered his forces. He had no idea he was being tailed, and he had no idea what was watching him from the courtyard right now. The smashing of the potted plant had been all that was needed to catch their attention.

They smelled blood. Fresh blood. They crawled out of their hidey-holes, skirting the light of the lampposts, always keeping well within the shadows.

Our Joshua quickly scampered down the remaining stairs, hitched up his skirts, and nimbly hopped over to Recepshua's desk. Already, flies had begun to gather on the gnarled remains of the body – it was dirty in here, so dirty. Of course there were flies. Heart racing, Joshua shook his head, trying to see if the cliched action would actually clear his mind.

It didn't. Actually, it gave him a bit of a headache.

Or maybe that was just the smell of the blood? Joshua clenched his teeth together, an action almost like hugging oneself, if you think about it, and with a strangled noise fluttering in the back of his throat he began rifling through Recepshua's personal belongings.

_Meat recipes, meat recipes, meat recipes..._ Joshua shoved the stacks of cookbooks off the desk and ran his fingers through the myriad papers scattered beneath. _Meatloaf recipe, pot roast recipe_ – gaah!

_Where would he keep it? Good grief! _Despite the feeling of malcontent bubbling in his guts, he jumped over the desk and crouched down, going through the cabinets below with the determination of a paparazzo. It seemed like Recepshua did little in the way of keeping any actual motel records or anything – who went where and such – Joshua supposed it didn't matter that much to the guy. All he had was a buttload of recipes and a box full of keys... that happened to be completely empty.

Joshua cursed, pushing the T-rating this time.

"Great..." He glanced at Recepshua's body, broken and covered in flies.

Maybe he kept it close...?

Joshua swallowed, a choking lump rising in his slimy undead esophagus. _Of course! Of course._ He threw his hands in the air, tutting loudly. He'd have to plunge deep into the guts and pick around, obviously.

Or... or maybe not – it seemed more likely that you'd keep a key in your trouser pockets, as opposed to your glandular pockets. Joshua smacked his forehead and rolled his eyes. Phobias make you stupid, kids.

And just where were their clothes, anyway?

"Their" meaning both Recepshua and the poor de-limbed and decapitated Neku torso. Apart from the ID tattoos on their clavicles, they were as naked as freshly disemboweled jaybirds. Not that they were exposing anything except their G-rated Barbie doll crotches and their decidedly not G-rated innards, but anyway. No pockets.

Joshua shuddered and inched his head upward, periscope-like, irritably scanning the room for any sign of the stupid receptionist's stupid shirt and pants. Even while dead, that guy was nothing but one unnecessarily-large heaping of trouble after another.

He didn't see any clothes, but he did see Neku. He blinked. _Neku?_

Neku was hunched over in the middle of the floor, filthy orange hair sticking to the back of his grimy neck, licking the bloody giblets out of the filthy carpet. Okay... that certainly _wasn't_ our Neku. And then – another, similarly dirty Neku crawled through the ajar door, scuttling over to a disembodied forearm and digging in as if it were a double burger from Sunshine.

Joshua felt his withered heart jerk painfully in his chest. _Ruh-roh._

He ducked back down, drawing his knees to his chest and being careful not to breathe. _Neku... _do_ something... ugh, wait. No. Don't._

_...Hold the phone. _

_What the hell is wrong with me today?_ Joshua seized his mental representation of his thought process and smacked it around a little, mentally, giving it a rough pep talk as if he were prepping for a Quidditch match or something. _I am the Composer of Shibuya! I am the Great Joshua, Overlord of the Underground, with about a million bat-winged vassals at my beck and call! Neku, while a powerhouse on his own, is next to nothing compared to me! Even a biologically-enhanced clone Neku should fall by my hand – they're all just little whiner baby girls, anyway, aren't they?_ Joshua smirked shakily, trying to ignore the massive flies gathering around his shoe and licking the mushed-up guts off, drawn as they were to the stink of blood like moths to the flame, bumblebeetles to the flish. _Oooh, go away, you stupid bugs..._

_I-I'm sure I can take them in a fight, _Joshua thought. The body next to him was making him uneasy – his eyes were beginning to water, his stomach was doing flip-flops._ Especially armed with my trusty weed whacker... uh... that I left upstairs. ...Well, drat!_

_S-silly me... well,__ if violence isn't the answer, you can always try running away really really fast. _He kind of had a bad habit of tailoring adages to suit his taste. And by "tailoring," I mean "butchering."

You have to remember that he was scared, the blood was making him sick, and that people do not always think rationally when caught between a phobia and a tribe of hungry cannibals. Least of all the showy, melodramatic kind of people.

Joshua hauled himself onto the reception desk, intending to be quiet and stealthy about it, but – his shoes slipped on the scattered stacks of steak recipes, sending a torrent of papers fluttering to the ground. Beyond that, Joshua also kind of lost his balance, pitched forward, and bashed his lordly chin on the countertop.

There followed a brief period of frantic cursing and nursing of wounds.

At the commotion, the clones' gore-smeared faces immediately snapped to attention. The two Nekus, sticky with blood and gobbets of flesh, fingers dirty and rust-red from ages of digging around in corpses, regarded the boy like twin deer caught in the headlights – like a pair of criminals caught in the act. Their eyes widened until they looked like cue balls, pure white and milky, slapped onto a couple of piles of greasy taco beef. The room was suddenly swallowed by a stiff silence.

The two parties stared at each other for a moment.

_Blood blood blood blood blood blood blood _-

And then, with an awe-inspiring harpy shriek of equal parts terror and exhilaration, Joshua shot off towards the stairs like a rocket sled on rails. Eyes streaming like crazy, he practically flew up the first flight, rebounded off the railing, scrambled up the next set while frothing at the mouth, ricocheted around the corner and catapulted to the third floor, shrieking like he'd just gotten out of the shower only to bump into a three hundred-pound pedophile with a camera. If you were on hand to observe the entire spectacle, you would probably liken it to watching a cat dropped into a bathtub.

Delirious and distraught, gibbering with terror, Joshua scurried down the hallway to room 37 like a frightened rat, his heart aching from the strain. (It was kinda out of shape.) His legs shook, cold centipedes of panic crawled up his back, maggoty noodles of fear writhed in his guts, and worst of all – he was _sweating_. Joshua could barely think; he was too busy flipping about thirty million lids, plus several borrowed from Neku and an assortment of coffee tables. Not even the nacho bar was safe from his rampage of flipping-the-fuck-out, much to the pale sewer creature's distress.

It was around halfway through the home stretch that the realization dawned: they weren't following him.

Joshua didn't exactly breathe a sigh of relief, nor did he relax; he just kinda slumped against the wall and sobbed a few times. You see, our Joshua had descended to a plane of being beyond rational thought, a state of fear so Nirvana-esque in its absoluteness that it was basically a black void of pure, blind terror. His mind had collapsed into a singularity of scared, and it was really quite impossible for him to think right now, let alone rip a snide comment on how his purposefully-theatrical battle with the stairs had just been wasted on an absent audience.

I'll cover for him. 'Gee, it's too bad that my purposefully-theatrical battle with the stairs has just been wasted on an absent audience. Ah, well. Such are the tumultuous twists and turns of this rickety roller coaster we call life. C'est la vie, no?'

(This is the part where you picture Joshua giving me a withering look and saying 'Your impression needs work,' or maybe grinding out 'That was good, but could you make your voice a _tad_ more nasally?' with a bit of a sarcastic slant.)

Instead of injecting this moment with the appropriate amount of comic relief, Joshua slid down the wall and condensed into a tiny bundle on the filthy carpet, burying his face in his frilly cowl and trying desperately to curb his shaking.

He wasn't scared of the clones, if that's what you are erroneously assuming. I mentioned before that Joshua had a nightmare regarding a blood monster? It goes a bit deeper than that.

While it's true that Joshua had never used to be afraid of blood – it's kind of a dumb phobia if you think about it – that only extends to the period of his existence where he was actually among the living. The human brain has many defense methods, and when faced with a trauma of suitable scale, it is often the case that the brain will simply bury the memory deep within the subconscious and forget about it. Such is the situation surrounding the circumstances of Joshua's death.

Even though I can't exactly relate to you the details, but given the evidence, it's pretty obvious that his death involved blood, and lots of it.

His "phobia" was not of blood itself, per se - he was only truly disturbed by things that reminded him strongly of his own demise, even though he may not consciously remember it. (You will recall that he dislikes hospitals as well.) There was a very specific kind of blood that freaked Joshua out – fresh blood. He hated fresh blood that covered stuff, dripped down stuff, and soaked into stuff. He hated bloody bandages, bloody bedsheets, bloody carpet. If it was still flowing, or even still wet, then he'd probably do a pirouette off the handle and land in the middle of a Swan Lake production where he was playing all the roles. All of them.

Now, dry blood? Psh, girl, _please_. Scabs and stuff were practically a different substance altogether for all he cared, as different as talcum powder and orange juice. Punching someone in the nose to calm them down? That scenario had basically nothing to do with his death at all, minus the nosebleed, and so it was hardly a disturbing thing to him. Nosebleeds are fairly common in Japan, anyway. Of course he'd have developed a tolerance. (That is a lie but just roll with it.)

It might sound a little sketchy to you, but the fact is that this is a story about Joshua tripping, hence the title: Joshua Trips. If this were a story about how Joshua caught a terminal illness and didn't get better, then it would be called Joshua Terminates – wherein Joshua gets sick and dies and now that he's out of the way let's all feel sorry for him while we eat snacks at his pity party and learn important lessons about washing our hands.

Let's move on.

By this point, Joshua had gradually come down off his panic attack, and, presently, had replaced his blind fear with incredible frustration and confusion, directly stemming from the fact that he hadn't able to curb the crawling in his skin _at all_. Joshua had never been a hormone-fueled emo hipster freakout machine; he'd always been pretty cool-headed. He took this freak-out session as a personal blow to his pride and resolved to tell nothing but blatant lies should the topic ever come up in future conversation.

You might wonder why the Joshua clones had ignored him to this point, given that he'd been making a bit of a ruckus. To find out the answer, please scroll up a little and read that part with Recepshua on the desk again. Screaming and shrieking was fairly commonplace; it was generally assumed, by those still lucid, that some joker must have stabbed their Neku to death instead of killing them quietly. You know – for smirks and giggles.

You might wonder why the Neku clones were staying downstairs. Picture this scenario: You walk into your kitchen to find your friend has brought you a couple of hamburgers, or veggieburgers or tofu burgers or gluten-free waffles or whatever the hell you like to put in your stomach. One of the foodstuffs is sitting on the table, completely still, all fresh and yummy and ready to be eaten. The other is still in the bag. As you sit down and take a bite of this tasty treat, the other one jumps out of the bag, stares at you, and runs off screaming like a : would you continue to eat your food, or would you drop everything on an instant and chase that fucker till his little legs popped off?

Well, on second thought, a scenario like that would probably spoil an appetite. The point is, if you were given a choice between two of the same food, where one is perfectly fine and inanimate and the other that has just run out the door, which would you choose? Realistically, most sensible people, who weren't put-out by the sight of a screaming, terrified hamburger, would probably eat the one that they didn't have to catch.

That was kind of a flawed allegory from start to finish, now that I think about it.

...Back to the story.

Joshua had gathered himself together by this time and was now getting to his feet, adjusting his dusty, sticky skirts and fluffing his stringy hair out. This was purely to buff his faith in his self, bring him back to that cool, calm and collected state of douchebaggery that we all have come to know and tolerate to some degree. With a close approximation of an arrogant sniff, Josh picked up his weedwhacker, electing to take the... suicidal option.

_Should have done this first_, he thought in a tired way as he hefted the weed whacker, fired it up, and brought the whirling scythes smashing into the wooden door. In seconds, the device had gnawed a hole in the door big enough for Josh to stick his head through, which was kind of overkill. Joshua slid his hand in through the still-smoking gap, fumbled around until he found the lock, turned it, and with a click the door swung open and Joshua was in.

The hallway was suddenly very quiet.

Even for people in the middle of an foodgasm, there are some things that just don't fly under the radar easily. Like gunshots, for example. Or weed whacker motors. Or the sound of a door being mulched into wood pulp.

And so, Joshua ran to the bed, yanked the computer out from underneath, and tucked it under his arm (so he could maintain his two-handed grip on the **Weedfucker **3000), almost as one fluid motion. After a second's hesitation, he reached out and snatched the box of chalk sitting on the bedside table. Neku would probably be whining about missing it at some soon-to-come point; best to be prepared.

Footsteps could be heard, quietly padding around in the adjacent rooms.

Cradling everything close to his body, Joshua stumbled over to the window and bashed it open with a wild, clumsy swing of the weed whacker – _keRASH!_ - and smirked weakly as glass exploded everywhere, the little window net ripping into clean halves. He placed his foot on top of the **A/C** unit, stuck the blade end of the weed whacker out the window, and kind of felt around with it until he felt it snag on a thick vine.

Somewhere down the hallway, a door creaked open. A suspicious, fluffy head peeked out, noticed the smashed-open door of room 37. That seemed kind of... odd.

Joshua could hear all of this, and his lungs were slowly constricting with anxiety because of it. He had to hurry, he had to hurry – but if he slipped now, if he even so much as leaned on his ankle funny, he would plummet out the window and splatter all over the street – which would be uncomfortable for him, sure, but he was more concerned about the fragile computer than his own well-being. Given that he was, well, immortal, after all.

Carefully, carefully, he crouched on the windowsill, edging himself around until his back was almost hanging out onto the open air. With a nervous little swing, he stuck the blade of the weed whacker firmly into the flesh of the largest rose-vine he could see, careful not to lose his balance.

Around this time, a naked, gore-smeared Josh clone, carrying a half-eaten heart like a half-eaten taco, elbowed his way into room 37 and cried out. "_Hey!_"

Joshua immediately screwed his eyes shut, hiding from the bloody sight.

He was three stories above the ground.

He was really hoping this plan would work.

He took a deep breath for luck, counted to three, and pushed off the windowsill with both legs.

* * *

**A/N:** Cliffhanger! Oh no am I setting up another COMBO or-or what is going on?

Okay so in this chapter Joshua's highly selective blood phobia rears its ugly head yet again! Gee, I bet you all thought that it was just a throwaway reference to Rhyme Over Reason, but NO, it actually had a purpose! Setting up this crazy fight scene, pow pow pow!

Sorry if you hate Joshua and are only reading this because I tend to put Josh.O through a lot of hardship. Sorry also if gore makes you sick. Sorry also again if you are completely disgusted that Joshua happens to not be made of 100% Pure Stone-Cold Doucheonium Carbonate and actually freaks out in this one and you feel this is so out-of-character you think you're going to puke.

If you have any predictions or theories or whatever I'd love to hear them so I can do the exact opposite of what everyone predicts like a total dickwad!

OR MAYBE NOT?

(don't worry Neku's gonna do something later

also OJ will too

maybe)


	21. In which Neku is Finally Focused On

_**JOSHUA TRIPS**_

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: IN WHICH NEKU TAKES THE MACGUYVER BATON AND SPRINTS LIKE A RELAY RACER

The Story So Far: Joshua is faffing around a whole lot over at the Pig Sigil Motel, finally taking care of that stupid UGharmony thing – or at least trying to. OJ is still unconscious. Meanwhile, Neku has had ENOUGH of this laying around in the squishy butt tubers of Pamela's sweet arms or whatever. How will he ever get out of the squishy wriggly grossfest unmolested? STAY TUNED!1!

Rating: Rated T for Tako Otoko, who will not be appearing in this fanfiction

OF NOTE IN THIS CHAPTER: Joshua and OJ are ignored in favor of Neku (finally!)

Genre: Parody/Adventure, with a dash of Horror here and there. The Parody part implies the humor, otherwise this would be a Parody/Action/Adventure/Horror/Humor/NOTyaoi fanfiction.

* * *

When we last left Neku Sakuraba, he was writhing around in the fleshy canals of Pamela's stomach, feeling sorry for himself. Which is understandable – what_ else_ would you feel in such a situation? Endlessly proud of your life's accomplishments? Blissfully, blithely happy, giggling stupidly as you stare vapidly off into space? Hungry for tacos?

Well, tacos are pretty good, but that's beside the point.

You will remember that Joshua had a whole adventure in the last chapter. However, I am going to tap into the Time Lord powers inherent in all authors and back up a while – roughly one hour prior to Joshua jumping out the window like a freak.

While Joshua was skipping away from WildKat, heading to the Pig Sigil Motel and wreaking of havoc, Neku was getting fed up completely with this sorry state of affairs he'd somehow gotten squeezed into.

He was thoroughly sick of fermenting in the muck, terribly tired of the convulsing green walls constricting on his sides in spastic ripples, and totally repulsed by all the slime everywhere. What with the gunk coursing down the rubbery, slippery walls in torrential gushers, it was nearly impossible to not get the stuff in your eyes, nose, mouth... And it tasted like twenty-day-old broccoli and bug-infested grass, blended together with a delicate blend of raw egg whites and vitreous humor.(Vitreous humor is bloody hilarious, by the way.) The bitter, cold sludge coated him in an inch-thick layer of milky mucous, slathering every sharp crook and jagged spike of his bony body with what looked like a rubber suit made of incredibly disgusting rice pudding.

The tunnel, you see, did not like Neku's sharp corners, and kept writhing around, trying to push Neku out. If he didn't dig in with all his might, he'd be pushed out and sprawl on the vine-covered floor, helpless to resist the many, many Gulliver's Travels-esque vines as they lashed him down and eventually choked him to death. This meant Neku could not easily just slip off into a daydream about chainsawing lumberjacks and wait it out; no, he had to exert painstaking focus to make sure he wasn't forcibly ejected from his hiding spot. This also meant he was constantly flipping around in hilariously compromising positions.

It was humiliating and revolting. And it also smelled disgusting.

Now, Neku had been willing to put up with such torture so far for a few reasons: it was better than getting molested by creepy tentacle-vines; it was warmer in here than outside; with no clothes to speak of, he would be as defenseless as a soft pink dango dumpling set before a pack of hungry, hungry weeaboos; and, finally, he trusted Joshua. He trusted that Joshua knew what he was doing, being an all-powerful ruler of the underworld. He knew he could count on Joshua to make the right decisions. He just had to hold on to that faith, blindly, as if it were the only plank of wood in an ocean full of sharks – he just had to hold on and wait for Josh to come back with some nice clothes and a towel, and then they could go home. And once there – fuck hopscotch, he would make a beeline for Shiki - he'd smash through every building in his path, total every car, plow through pedestrians like a runaway train, seize her roughly by the shoulders and toss her joyfully in the air, singing Bohemian Rhapsody at the top of his angular lungs - "_IS THIS THE REEEEEAAAL LIFE? IS THIS JUST FANTASY?_"

And never read fanfiction ever, ever again.

But even that delightful thought could not keep his spirits up indefinitely. Joshua was just taking too long, the lazy ass. Neku's inner emo swelled with every passing moment, bellowing bloodcurdling roars and straining fiercely against the shackles that bound it Simple indignation bubbled into irritation, which mutated into anger, which quickly exploded into a boiling rage. Neku ground his teeth, hating that creampuff of a demigod, hating Pamela for literally stripping him of his dignity, hating the Celcius degrees in the immediate area for being too low, hating the author for bringing this shame upon him, hating for hosting this epic-long chronicle of his humiliation, hating Square Enix for putting him in a game that would later develop a fandom that would later necessitate the need for parody such as this, hating Tetsuya Nomura for not giving him enough zippers, hating the Earth, hating the trees, hating the way certain carpets feel when you rub them the wrong way, hating miniature marshmallows – he lied there and fumed, hating everything without discrimination.

The only thing keeping his fearsome hatred in check was the thought that Joshua would come back. Any minute now, this agony would end.

Soon.

_Soon._

But, you see, Joshua's triumphant return was not going to be "soon," a fact that slowly became evident. It had only barely been about two hours, and yet it felt like an eternity of purgatory, of hellish punishment and no end in sight. As time slowly trickled by, Neku found himself giving in to the urges – the emo urges, long-suppressed but still ever-present.

_((Neku,)) _they whispered. _((Join us, Neku))._

_No! No, I'm a new man now! I don't have time to wallow in impotent hatred of everything that breathes. I have _friends _now, in case you didn't realize. _He snarled like a caged werewolf, sliding on the rubbery walls of the tunnel and twisting his arm painfully in the process. _Hell, I practically have my own slice-of-life harem comedy!_

_((Where is your harem now, Neku Sakuraba? They cheerfully abandoned you to the yonic voids of unspeakable eldritch horrors and their vile machinations! Don't you just want to _cut _yourself?))_

_It's not their fault! Plus, Joshua's coming to help me... any minute now..._

_((Come to the dark side, Neku.))_

_...Ha ha, yeah, right. J-Just leave me alone, already –_

_((We have cookies~))_

_N-No! Must... suppress..._

He fought bitterly to preserve his character development, but that all went out the window when a fat, glistening blob of mucous dripped from the ceiling and slapped him on the face with a wet _splot_.

With a howl of anguish, the demons took over.

Flicking his head so that his soaked bangs covered approximately three-fifths of his face, radiating an aura so corrosive it caused any iron object in the radius of twenty feet to collapse into a pile of rust flakes immediately, and muttering MCR lyrics under his breath, Neku almost seemed transformed. Gone was any trace of the grumpy Sora expy we all know and love to roll our eyes at – he seemed almost inhuman, nearly demonic. His blue eyes glowed an impossible crimson red, redder than the reddest of red velvet cakes - or even, dare I say, _stoplights_ - as if to underline this fact. Arcane whispers dripped from his lips like the ropy yellow saliva of a pit fiend. Interestingly enough, these whispers turned out to be a stanza from one of Neku's spontaneous poetic gems:

_Life is pain.  
Love is pain.  
Nobody understands me.  
That shallow prep Josh ditched me.  
He's such a freaking manwhore.  
I hide my pain behind my coll-lore  
But I just can't take it any more!_

His black aura of soul pain grew darker with every heartfelt, emotionally-charged, colder-than-the-gates-of-Tartarus-itself word, its power only growing with each painful, painful rhyme. As the blade of each butchered stanza grated against the roof of his mouth, so too did he feel his senses sharpen, his awareness heightening. Through the red haze of anger he rose; as he broke the scarlet cloud cover of blinding rage, it fell away below him, and thus he was left in the perfect clarity of utter_ insanity_.

A state of mental flow took hold. Focus. He knew only focus. He wanted there to be blood – and there WOULD be blood. He wanted there to be pain – and there WOULD be pain. He wanted Joshua to hurt – and by the gods above, SO IT WOULD BE.

That revolting abomination – no, that ratty, twitching piece of mouth-breathing roadkill mistakenly given immortality – _no,_ that sweaty, maggot-infested shambling mound of moldy tissues and atrophied blobs of clammy fat – no, that... that _SHEEP-HEAD - _that_ sheep-head_ had a lot of nerve, dumping poor Neku in a slimy plant asshole and leaving him to rot like this. He had probably just run off completely, only thinking about saving his own pasty behind from being clawed apart by cannibals - "If zombies attack, I'm tripping your ass," clearly another one of Joshua's many mantras. How very _typical_ of him. Always caring only for himself, treating other people's lives like they were nothing more than knock-off plastic toys from a gas station in Arizona, the dick. Neku ground his teeth, sparks of flame flying out from his bulging eyes, which were beginning to leak a fetid mixture of eyeliner and blood. He was going to choke that chicken-necked freak with his bare hands! He was going to rip Joshua's spine out and bash him over the head with it! He was going to send him a bunch of nasty, nasty e-mails!

But, first things first – before any beatings could begin, Neku had to get out of this hole.

Neku scooted backwards, fighting the convulsing walls of Pamela's canals. The slimy mucous coating his body made him slippery enough that the going wasn't as rough as it could have been, but the vines still ground painfully against his skin in undulating rings, pushing him forward a little each time.

_I cut myself that I may feel, otherwise the feelings just aren't real.  
So much pain in the world, I just can't deal.  
My mind is so awfully surreal.  
My favorite color isn't teal.  
I like to play the glockenspiel._

Drawing upon the power of terrible, meter-less poetry, Neku found a fresh wellspring of new strength and tapped it like it were some kind of magnificent ass-goddess from outer space. He grit his teeth and basically kicked his way back down Pamela's emergency exit with the calm temperament of a furious grizzly bear.

He wormed his way down a few more feet, battling the bucking tunnel every step of the way, until finally it felt like he was in the right position at last. Grimy rivulets of slime dripped down his face in thick, snotty strings; his hair was plastered to his scalp, face, and neck; his features were twisted menacingly into a scowl of pure determination. He dug his neatly-trimmed fingernails into the thick layer of mucous coating the wall, holding himself in place as the passageway rebelled against him again and again with wave after choking wave. It was incredibly hard to breathe in here, but Neku had to time this exactly right.

Backing up served two purposes: it ensured that the surrounding tunnel tissue was less used to Neku being there, and as a consequence, ensured that what he was about to do would hurt more.

The rage he had bottled up within him suddenly exploded into a volcanic eruption of anger, and with a furious roar he stabbed his bladelike kneecaps as hard as he could into the virgin green flesh. Milky-white fluid gushed from the wound, welling up around the boy's legs and getting all over everything.

The tunnel around him seemed to deflate for a moment, almost as if paralyzed with shock.

Then, it began to rumble.

It began to rumble, to ripple, to vibrate, as if an earthquake had chosen that moment to strike. The boy could feel every fiber in the tunnel seizing up, rattling and shaking with tension as every tendon was drawn taught. Neku gripped the walls tightly, bracing himself.

Suddenly, a distinct, guttural slurp sounded from below – and it was getting closer, fast. Neku took in a deep breath and tucked his arms to his sides as the most massive contraction yet shot out of the darkness and slammed into his feet with painful force, dragging him upwards at a staggering speed. The walls were so tight together not even Neku's skinny ankles could fit inside, and so he was rudely and decisively removed.

Perhaps "removed" is a little too domestic for our purposes. Neku was forcibly evicted from the tunnel like a cannon shot, bursting from the quivering slime-hole so fast that he was launched through the air. He slammed into the opposite wall so hard his nose started bleeding again.

His face was a wreck, his body was naked, and his entirety was covered in slime, but Neku would not let that slow him down. Wasting no time, he sprung off the vine-covered wall and sprinted down the overgrown hallway like an Olympic medalist going for the gold. And not a single pace too quickly – the creeper vines practically fell over themselves in their haste to grab at his ankles, his angles, his wrists, his thighs – one particularly ambitious one dropped from the ceiling and tried to make off with his nose, but Neku just punched it in half and kept running.

After a second or two he smashed through the door and tumbled out into the evening sun, an enraged warble ululating from his general being. He bounced a couple of times and rolled a few feet, eventually smacking into the wall of the building across the alleyway. For a moment he simply lay there, sprawled in the golden dust, oozy and slippery. The artificial, man-made flatness of the concrete below was the most beautiful thing he had ever felt – softer than any silk, more comfortable than any mattress. He wanted to dissolve into the asphalt and cement and lay there forever, entombed in his own bliss.

But he could not rest here for long. Neku hauled himself up from the gritty ground, grumbling and roughly wiping blood from his lips.

The blood was, unfortunately, noticed by a nearby Joshua.

Before Neku had a chance to react, a pallid, howling creature barreled into his stomach like a crazy hairless werewolf. Neku's lungs crumpled with the impact, breath abandoning him with a painful hooklike jerk – and he slammed into the ground backfirst, scraping his bare skin a little. He cried out in pain, then made an angry howl of indignation as the Joshua unit grabbed him roughly by the hair and tried to drag him off.

Something clicked in the monstrous thing's hideous black eyes, and it dropped Neku's soggy ol' head as if it were on fire, shrieking. Neku scuttled backwards and jumped to his feet, blood 99.99% adrenaline.

The Joshua unit screeched in agony, a sound comparable to nails being dragged down a chalkboard. It staggered backward, clutching its hand – which appeared to be melting.

Neku got a nasty grin on his face.

Kids: don't try this at home.

Neku charged at the clone and punched it in the gut with the force of an incoming train. The thick coating of slobbery acid that glazed his knuckles did exactly what you'd think it would – the flesh was bubbling and boiling in seconds, tissues liquefying and dribbling out as steaming, sizzling holes in the flesh opened like yawning, glistening mouths. The clone made a final noise of surprise and flew backward, gurgling, smashing thickly onto a twisted iron candelabra. One curly metal spine speared deep into its convulsing back, and it didn't take long for the thing's brain to simply shut down from the sudden stress. Nekus _never_ hit back.

It twitched violently for a moment, then lay still. Neku cracked his knuckles, sniffing in disgust.

Joshua betrayed him, and now, a black cauldron of anger long-left to simmer was boiling at full blast. He had dragged Neku to this alternate universe, possibly trapping them forever; he had gotten them thrown in a pit of acid, nearly digested, nearly fried alive in a furnace; he had left Neku to get stuffed in stupid Lolita threads, left him to die alone and without pride in a plant's ugly and distended waste chute – perhaps the best way to accurately describe the way Neku felt about Joshua that moment would be with the (terrible) song he happened to be singing at the moment: "_He betraaaaayed me, he left me to die~ He discaaaaaaaaaarded me, hung me out to dry~ I doooon't knooow whyyyyy he did it, but that guy~ he's gotta die~~_"

In other words, he was ready to pound the tar out of any vaguely Joshua-like object that just happened to be stupid enough to enter his field of sensory detection.

Unfortunately, this "acid-punching a clone in the guts" was not exactly a silent procedure.

Suddenly, the pit-pat sound of small feet on the dry ground could be heard, and two more Joshes emerged into the alleyway. They were the packmates of Mr. Impaled On A Candelabra, but Neku didn't really know that. Nor did he care. All he saw were two fresh new targets.

When they saw what had happened to their comrade, they were understandably pissed off.

"Oho~" sneered one, who had not yet activated. Its face was somewhat normal, and that much more detestable. It gently nudged the corpse of its compatriot with its sharp toe, sneering. "Oh, F-65. You poor dear." His lazy gaze rolled up to meet Neku's, a smirk stretching across the clone's too-perfect face like a ballerina doing calisthenics. "Somebody's been a bad, bad bunny..."

The other one snarled, pupils expanding and jaws opening wide, too wide. Teeth, glistening. "LeT'S MakE an EXAMplE oUt oF thIS OnE, sHAll wE?"

"I concur." The Unactivated's smirk etched itself deeper, like a widening crack in a pane of glass, and he cracked his delicate knuckles as he glanced over his shoulder. "Children, pay attention. This is what we'll do to you if you get any ideas, mm'kay?"

There came a light, despairing titter from beyond the alleyway. This titter was largely ignored.

Neku let a curtain of wet hair fall over his eyes, his black aura oozing out of him in more torrents than in all of the pirate bay. "Hey, Joshes. I want to play a game."

"A game...?"

A dark whisper slithered out from between the boy's emo-tastic lips. "How many hits does it take..."

Abruptly, Neku made his move. Like a viper he struck, springing forward and tackling Activated to the ground. Apparently this was such an idiotic, stupid, and plain suicidal move – to tackle a psycho cannibal in the throes of Murder Mode? - that it was completely unforeseeable by even the uncomputerized parts of the Josh's brain. The Unactivated clone jumped backwards, colliding roughly with the wall as a small, choked hiccup-gasp flew from his throat. He shivered uselessly for a moment, rendered slightly catatonic with surprise. He could have at least finished his sentence, good grief!

"...to get to the _center_..."

Neku's body was, as you'll recall, still slathered thickly in the graywater.

The Activated one got around an instant of surprise to his name, which was quickly destroyed by the pleasant sensation of a searing hellfire boiling his flesh from the inside out. The clone struck the ground painfully, bones crying out in protest as Neku began punching the crap out of the clone with the fury of a thousand burning suns. The clone's vision burnt and curled like paper, red and blue and purple pain exploding from his skin with enough force to make him wail and convulse in agony – each impact of fist against flesh drilled deep channels into his body, turning the bones white-hot, soft... molten...

"...of a _cream puff?_"

Answer: About ten.

Puddles of bubbling, pink flesh dripped from the clone's elbows, leaving burned trails in their wake. Its gut was a like a gross, dirty sink, full of bubbling soap and throbbing, glistening viscera. The clone screamed and writhed as the acid dripped from Neku's thighs and boiled his exposed nerve endings. A hole like a bullet's kiss was opening in his stomach, and Neku, for a moment in his frenzy, noticed the thing was full of partially-digested human flesh. Bluuaggh. If he had been in a normal state he probably would have recoiled in horrified nausea, but at this point all he cared about was pummeling the snot out of Josh. He was... he was just really pissed, okay? Really, really... pissed.

Damn, Neku. You scary.

He pulled back his arm for a final punch and jammed his fist squarely in the thing's snapping jaws. Out of instinct, the clone bit down, only to have his teeth abruptly melted off. This says nothing of what happened to his throat.

Still shaken, the Unactivated Clone forced himself to come to his senses at this point. He had to... to throw something at the berserk Neku unit, or something. Yeah. Something.

The most terrifying thing about the situation, for the clone, was that the crazed cattle was absolutely _covered_ in the graywater. To a clone, this was akin to seeing your colleague get tackled and beat up by a giant hamburger that was on fire. It was incredibly surreal.

The clone gave up on his two fallen buddies and reached for the nearest thing at hand, which just so happened to be a plank of wood. He chucked it at the raving lunatic with all his might, hoping this might clock him out for a few seconds.

The raving lunatic caught it.

It melted in half.

Unactivated Clone ran for his life.

Emo Emo Revolution-mode Neku stood up, laughing like a maniac. "HEY JOSH, COME BACK! Hahaha! Come on, dude! HAHAHA!"

Unactivated Josh Tripped over a loose coil of rope and came crashing down, bashing his chin on the pavement and letting loose a clipped, animal cry of terror. Neku strode forth, giggling like a psycho, and placed a foot on the clone's back. Pinned him down.

The shirt practically evaporated under his sole, turning into little but a bubbling foam. The skin took a good moment to really get boiling, but once it did, Neku's foot began to sink slightly in the pinkish slurry. The clone thrashed and cried and tried to drag itself away, cycling between activation and inactivation as it writhed in agony. Ribs, spine, nerves. All liquefying slowly, burning horribly. Imagine molten lead being pumped into your back through a foot-shaped nozzle. Imagine the slow, agonizing collapse of tissues and organs as they burned to useless, leathery pouches, consumed and melted by the heat and the acid bite. Imagine them melting into a horrific liquid ooze that burned ever deeper into your flesh, even as you were pinned down, helpless to do anything but squirm and flail uselessly as the muscles of your back twitched and spasmed in agony.

Neku waited till the thing's back was the consistency of bubbling mud, burning warmly around his foot, and then he kicked it away into the corner. It would continue convulse for around for around an hour longer before giving up and shutting down completely, but that's not too important.

Having taken out an entire Joshua pack with nothing but the goo on his skin, Emo Emo Revolution Neku swaggered out of the alley with a really obnoxious grin on his face.

He was greeted with quite a sight. Four Neku clones, huddling together, fearfully looking up at this slimy abberation with something like reverence. Laying nearby was a Neku corpse, splayed out against the building, ribcage torn open and all that business.

"Hey," said one of them.

"Hey," said our Neku.

"Y-you saved us," whimpered another, who seemed to be gripping onto the first. He had abnormally huge, ocean-blue eyes and soft pumpkin-colored hair, which made him look vaguely like a gangly Troll doll: ugly and harmless.

"They were gonna eat us, like they ate C-Coco..." muttered another wimpy-looking one in the back. He sobbed and then tried to pretend he hadn't. "B-but now... we're free."

"F-free," three of them murmured as one, eyes sparkling. "You freed us..."

_Holy crap, are they all defensives or what_, Neku thought, crossly. "Who's Coco?"

"I'm Alpha. Neku Alpha," said the first Neku. He wiggled his arm, and consequently, the clone latched onto it. "This is Neku Bravo."

Neku Bravo smiled shyly. "...You're... _cool_, mister."

"The other two are Charlie and Delta," Alpha continued. Insecure sniffle boy and the brooding, as-yet-unmentioned one offered curt waves. Charlie's hand had on the weirdest rings Neku had ever seen.

Alpha glanced at the corpse over on the wall, shuddering a little. "And that one..._used_ to be Coco – er, Neku Echo."

"Fascinating," our Emo Emo Revolution Neku drawled, folding his arms. "Why should I care?"

Neku Alpha stiffened. "N-no reason!"

"U-uh, it's not like we... like you or anything!"

"...Idiot..."

"H-hmph..."

Neku could barely handle the onslaught of tsuntsun. "J-Jeez! Okay!" His gaze drifted over the various Neku clones, who appeared to each have varying injuries. Alpha, for example, had two dark gouge marks on his cheek, and one of Bravo's ears was missing. Charlie had a bite mark or two on his shoulders – like shark hickeys – and Delta had one eye clenched painfully shut. All of them were somewhat banged up – the soft, pink flesh of their arms and legs was spotted with contusions and small nicks and scratches. Their hair was matted with dirt and sweat and what looked uncomfortably like blood.

It was disconcerting and surreal to see four of himself, all cut up, with haunted eyes leering at him from sunken sockets. It was like seeing yourself as you'd appear in a Saw film, all gross-looking, multiplied by four. Neku was _slightly_ agitated by the sight – those clones, man. Just... those clones!

Eyebrows knitting, he pointed at Alpha's wounds. "Did they do that to you?"

"H-huh? ...Yes, our masters..." The clone winced and touched the crusty, black lacerations with ginger fingers. "If we disobeyed, they would get angered, and... and sometimes, even when we were good, they'd hurt us anyway." As if realizing he'd said too much, he turned away, gritting his teeth. "It's really none of your business, though..."

"So you just _let _them carve you up whenever they wanted?" Neku asked, tone sharpening like a blade. "You didn't even try to fight back? You called them..._master?_" He spit out that last word as if it were poisonous, poisonous poison. Neku opened his heart to the darkness and let the emo rage flow into him once again. The pississitude meter was rising.

"They would kill us if we didn't obey!" protested the wimpy-looking Bravo, huddling closer to Alpha. "It's not like we didn't _try!" _

"We don't want to be _had,_ you know," Charlie snapped, curt.

"We resisted at every turn! Every night, they'd hold one of us down and have their way, b-but we didn't make it easy!"

"We scratched at their faces! We clawed at their eyes like really, really _angry _kittens!" Bravo whimpered, insistent. He clutched at Alpha's thin arm with his grubby fingers, clinging to the other clone as if he were a security blanket.

Looking closely at Bravo's hands, Neku suddenly realized something.

Bravo had no fingernails.

A quick glance around the group confirmed that neither did any of the other members.

"W-We tried," Alpha said softly.

Bravo shuddered faintly, fat tears leaking out of the corners of his vapid, watery eyes. "P-poor Foxy..."

"Your hands," Neku said, unsure of how to broach the subject. He tried again, but still couldn't properly finish the sentence: "Your _nails.._."

"Our n-nails..." Bravo repeated lamely, bottom lip quivering like a cold chihuahua.

Alpha bit his tongue and looked away, rubbing his shoulder in typical Neku fashion. "With our nails, we scratched them. They... ripped them out."

"All of them."

"Delta shouted at them once... and they clawed the teeth out of his skull."

"They tore his tongue away."

Neku's brows tightened further, emo rage beginning to transition into pure, cold horror. "How...?"

The Neku clones as a whole looked at him, confused. "Huh?" They looked like they were ready to give him some dumb answer, like, 'With their hands, silly-head!' so Neku decided to extrapolate.

"Surely you could have overpowered them?" our hero asked, frown deepening. "There's four of you and only three of them-"

"Oh, uh..."

"They made us... d-dumb," Bravo said, groping for words.

"The roses..."

Stiff silence fell over the troupe for a moment.

Since Delta couldn't very well talk, missing half his mouth as he was, Alpha spoke up for him. "They... embroidered his eye... they kinda... pinned it open and held him down, and they took a rusty sewing needle a-and... and..." He couldn't finish, evidently. "They... they forced us to watch, you know..."

Delta sniffled faintly, folding his arms tight and looking rather serious.

Charlie grunted. "They tried to kiss me, once. I smacked them. They drove nails through my fingers." He held up his hands for illustration – and Neku realized that the rings were actually spikes of rusty iron, impaled through the flesh. The clone's fingers were stiff with infection, and he winced at their slightest movement.

"And one time... one time, th-they set my pants on fire!"

Neku felt sick – those were his hands, after all; that was his eye, stitched up and flecked with black infection and dark flakes of rust; that was his body, clawed and bitten and mutilated and touched and kissed...

Tears began to slip out of Bravo's eyes. "Oh, Coco... _F-Foxy_..."

Even though he was staring blankly into space, trying to process this, Neku must have somehow looked like he wanted to question Bravo's strange infatuation with Foxtrot, because Charlie took that moment to curtly explain: "They made Bravo eat Foxtrot's remains."

"So you see," said Alpha, rubbing his shoulder. "It's not so much that we didn't fight back, it's that we _couldn't_..."

The entire group looked thoroughly miserable for a moment. It was undoubtedly poetic.

...Oh, boo-hoo, all of you.

Neku smacked the author upside the arrogance for being such a cold-hearted bastard. "Ahem... anyway..." He was starting to feel glad he'd ripped those clones to shreds back there; why, what convenient justification for senseless murder this was! Even if the things being murdered were clones programmed to eat his flesh.

...Wait a minute. You know what? Those Joshua clones could have been the nicest little trio ever and they'd still deserve what they got, if only because they were hopeless cannibal serial killers who liked to bait teenagers in with promises of tea and cookies and proceed to rip them apart and eat them.

(Allow the author to once again reassure the audience, because by now they're probably wondering, that _yes_, Neku was indeed still naked.

Yes, this is a problem.

Yes, we are working on fixing it.

No, fangirls, you don't have any say in this.)

The Neku clones weren't any better, now. But there are a few reasons Neku was feeling kind of sympathetic for the wretched little chaps: reason one, we have yet to see the Neku clones in action. Reason two, _hello?_ They were routinely tortured by _Joshua_ units. Neku would not stand for this travesty – this was an outrage! A slanderous scandal! Finally, the most important of them all - reason three: the four had the most gorgeous faces Neku had ever seen.

In addition, the idea that _his_ doppelgangers could be bloodthirsty fleshmongers kind of escaped Neku. He had a bit of a bias. You might be saying to yourself, "That isn't the Neku I know! My Neku could spot a trap from a mile away!" Remember that our Neku's soul had been augmented and entwined with the souls of an egotistical jerk, a self-worshiping melodrama-queen, and a attention-hogging foreigner. Of course Neku's own pride would have been elevated by this lethal cocktail – jacked up, like, sixty stories or something – until it pierced the "logic and reozone" layer and left his psyche to bask in the sunbeams of self-centered praise. In other words, he thought quite highly of himself, most of the time.

"That's... that's terrible," he mumbled, quite Shiki-like. "It's _sickening_, is what it is. This isn't right." He glowered fiercely at the dirt, shifting into bigshot hero mode, his eyes smoldering like two cobalt coals. "_This isn't right_. I can't... I can't let this continue."

"But this is how it always is," Alpha protested. "You can't just... change how the world works, because you don't like it. That's not... how it is." His orange bangs, sticky with dirt and matted with dried blood, fell over his eyes. "This is just the way things are... we just have to take what we're given and swallow the bloody tears we cry, endure this painful torture we call life-"

"NO!" Neku snapped, jabbing his finger at the crybaby with flaming conviction. His conviction was so hot, you could smelt swords on that shit. "That isn't the way to look at things, you idiot! A long time ago, I was in a similar situation – forced to run around and do pointless errands all for the entertainment of a cream puff-like, glimmerous fop, who took pleasure in my pain and also shot me a few times while constantly packing my head with meaningless drivel whenever possible! Every day I had to fight demons, crack codes, solve riddles, buy lunch for reapers, wear girl clothes for reapers (yuck), deal with being partnered to a dangerous-button-pressing, skateboarding wonderboy, that vapid, tittering fashionista, and Shiki... all for his perverse enjoyment. He made me sleep in the street, for Pete's sake! It was _torture_ on my back, I tell you!

"Every day and night, I kept on fighting – and I still don't know why I did. I didn't have anything to live for. There was no reason for me to suffer like this, day after day; I could have just given up and faded away at any time. Just let myself be dissolved by Noise. But I didn't. And you know why? I couldn't give up. I refused to let myself – my partner – down, at the very least... when I was ready to give in, I thought of them, and kept going. And I found myself reasons to live. Their names were Shiki, Beat, and Lady Gaga. She is just such a brilliant performing artist. A day without Lady Gaga is like a rave without drugs. I kind of went off on a tangent there.

But those weeks, those weeks taught me a very important lesson..."

He flexed his arm triumphantly.

"If the way of the world isn't right, just beat the shit out of the Composer until he fixes it!"

"C-Composer?"

"Yes! The asshole running this godforsaken circus!" He thrust his finger towards the sky, caught up in the thrilling clutches of giving a rousingly-cheesy motivational speech yet again. "We have to find the one responsible for this twisted sister system, and BREAK HIS FACE!"

"...B-Break his face?"

"WRECK HIS SHIT!"

"Wreck his shit?"

"BURN AND CRUSH!"

"Burn and crush...!"

"RIP AND TEAR!"

"_RIP AND TEAR!_"

They were hungry for revenge! Revenge against those who had wronged them! Revenge against those who had brought them suffering! And here, here was an almost godlike figure, liberating them from their tormentors so easily where they had been unable to! Of course they would follow him! Of course they would cling to this great one's legs, cluster and clamor in his golden shadow, drink up his every word like sacred scripture! He promised revenge, he promised blood! BLOOD, I say! Even Delta seemed mildly animated by this rousing chorus, offering hoarse barks from his scabby throat where he couldn't actually speak. They hopped around, cajoling like a tribe of bloodthirsty savages. "Burn and crush! Rip and tear! _Burn and crush! Rip and tear!_"

"WAIT!" shouted Neku all of a sudden. "Stop having fun!"

"L-Leader-sama!" cried the Neku clones, quickly switching into 'nervous broad' mode.

Leader-sama whipped around to face his freshly-acquired followers. He looked down at himself and scowled. "Before we go off and wreak havoc, I need some clothes."

"Yes, Leader-sama! Anything you say!" They quickly began stripping.

"No! No, stop!" Neku grimaced. "You don't need to prance around naked _too_. Just find me something to wear." He struck a cheesy pose. "And then we can all be... as _equals!_"

"Leader-sama is so smart~!" they cooed, sickeningly sweet.

"Aughaah," Delta agreed, sounding like a choking seal.

What a bunch of boneheads.

With a stiff salute, Bravo darted off into the night, presumably heading out to beat up some poor chaps and rob them of their clothing. Neku nodded in approval and, figuring that things ought to be a lot more organized under his reign, rounded on the rest of his lackeys.

"All right. You guys. I'm looking for a fellow named Yoshiya Kiryu. He answers to 'cream puff' if you're brusque enough about it. Now, pay attention: I want you to find him and bring him back to me as soon as you can." Neku crossed his arms and beamed a very serious look into the skulls of Alpha, Delta, and Charlie. "It is of critical importance that we, as allies, all stick together. This fanfiction is starting to dabble its toes in the urine-saturated, chemically-untreated waters of the Horror pool; let's keep our savviness towards the genre handy and proceed with caution."

The clones nodded, looking slightly confused. As one, they wondered: _What's a fanfiction?_

"I'm only sending you out now because there's little possibility of you getting picked off barely a page divider after your introduction. Also, I know the author needs to somehow steer that meandering dork back towards the plot pretty soon or there's gonna be a revolt. Therefore, the odds are in our favor." Neku nodded to his followers, who nodded back slowly, figuring it was best if they just copied what he did.

Our protagonist continued to babble. "Now, about this guy... He looks just like your average Joshua unit, but don't be fooled: his hair is a little longer than the clones' hair, he has these scraggly little nubs for fingernails, and he smells kind of like roadkill. He's no cannibal, he's just kind of a jerk. ...More importantly, he's my friend. Don't hurt him, okay? Just go get him."

Charlie cracked his knuckles – well, he thought about doing it, then looked down at his messed-up hands and wisely decided otherwise. "You sure we can't stomp him?"

"No stomping!" Neku insisted, shaking his head. "If anyone's gonna be doing any stomping, it will be me and me alone, understand? He's _my_ friend, and he deserves a _personal_ punishment." Neku's desire to snap our Joshua's neck was declining steadily, as the cream puff's crimes were beginning to pale in comparison to the committed atrocities he saw before him. He now desired more the collective snapping of the Joshua _units'_ necks. For the actual Composer of Our Shibuya, Neku'd probably settle for just a punch in the arm – yeah, that would fix him.

The clones said they understood.

"Great," said Neku. "When you find him, take him to Hachiko and wait for me. I'll stay here and get dressed, and check up on some people who could possibly help us raid the Shibuya River. Then I'll come meet you, and we can all go and case the joint as one merry band of hellions. We'll go from there."

"Yes, sir, Leader-sama!" the two Neku clones capable of speech shouted.

"UUAAH!" shouted Delta, not to be outdone.

"Go forth, my minions!" Neku grinned evilly, shooing the little rascals away. When the three clones were out of sight, he stood there proudly for a moment, nigh aglow with the satisfaction of a father that has raised several successful sons.

Then he finally remembered he was naked and hid behind a trash can, smacking his face with an exasperated palm. "...What is WRONG with me?"

* * *

It is probably worthy to note that Neku did not seriously believe beating up a Composer would make them any more agreeable. That had kind of been his inner Beat talking. However, it struck Neku as mind-numbingly stupid that they hadn't just gone to the Composer for help in the first place. He assumed Joshua's colossal ego had very deliberately blotted out the sun of reason with its black, prideful shadow – it seemed logical that the persnickety old fool wouldn't want to be indebted to an alternate version of himself. If you've read this far, you probably know as well as Neku that two Joshuas cannot exist on the same plane and be on good terms with each other.

A while later, our Neku was rejoined by Neku Bravo. And not a moment too soon – it was cold and dirty behind the trash can, and his brain was practically radiating lists of the dangerous bacteria likely to be dwelling in these shadows. Because of the hypochondriac mantra rattling around in his brain, Neku refused to let any part of him that wasn't already dead touch the ground or the walls, and so wound up balancing precariously on his toenails for ten minutes.

"Leader-sama-tan!"

Neku fell over at the sudden shout and wound up sprawled on the grungy pavement. He cursed eloquently and without remorse.

Bravo came limping over, holding a variety of clothes. "L-Leader-sama-tan, what are you doing? You look silly..."

Neku spat out a mouthful of concrete and screwed his bashed jaw back on properly. "Call it a power nap."

"Uh... okay," Bravo said slowly. "All right... Well, I didn't know which kind you liked, so I got a few different choices." The blushing clone promptly blushed and set the clothes down, blushing. Neku descended upon them like a starving vulture, examining the garments ravenously. A maid outfit with a scandalously short skirt, a seersucker-patterned lolita dress, a purple bikini, something that looked suspiciously like a dominatrix outfit (well, it was that or a pile of belts), a really sissy-looking blouse covered in smiling daisies -

A momentary pause.

"Bravo," said Neku. "What the _hell _is this?"

"I-Is it not your color? Oh... o-oh, oh no..." The clone bit his lip and looked away, somehow blushing even more. An interesting fact: the Neku unit had matrices of pink lights installed under their facial skin. They could illuminate dark rooms with a single embarrassing thought.

"Why? In the name of all that is good and decent,_ why?_" Neku stared at the blouse with unending revulsion, feeling a little personally insulted. Plus, it was kind of stupid-looking.

"I-I'm s-sorry, these are what J-Joshua units like a-and I've never gone sh-sh-shopping for anyone e-else," Bravo whimpered, his voice a pale and emaciated mouse squeaking hoarsely and painfully in the back of his throat. "P-Plus I don't really have much of a p-p-personal style... N-Not that I actually w-w-went shopping, I, um, I just went back to the hideout and r-raided the Masters' c-closet... S-So..."

Neku immediately stared at the dominatrix outfit/pile of belts with fresh horror. "God _damn._" He glared daggers at Bravo – if looks could kill, this would have gotten Neku elevated to serial murderer status.

Eager to respond in kind, Bravo gave Neku a fairly bashful look – blue eyes opened incredibly wide, eyebrows tied in an apprehensive knot, quivering bottom lip.

Though thoroughly sickened at the parody of death-glaring Bravo was putting on, Neku wanted to wear _something_, at least. The lesser of five evils. Neku gingerly kicked the dominatrix belt pile away and sighed bitterly. ...Make that _four_ evils.

The maid outfit looked ridiculous, but it had the "advantage" of a shorter skirt. If he had to run, he wouldn't be tripping over miles of fabric. ...Of course, he'd leave a trail of pungent fanservice in his wake. He might as well not wear anything at all.

The pearly-pink and white seersucker Lolita dress was much more conservative, but Neku had just gotten out of a Lolita thing and didn't exactly feel like putting one back on. Plus, he was kind of annoyed that he even knew what the word "seersucker" meant.

The purple bikini would pass as underwear. Grumbling obscenities, he jammed his feet into the bottom half and yanked it up, feeling awfully silly – the little bows on the sides of the swimsuit sat awkwardly on the sharp corners of his pelvis, tickling his legs in an annoying fashion.

Now, I'm sure you're getting an adorable image in your head where little Nekkun is wearing a cute bikini the color of Josh-Josh's eyes and blushing because it tickles. Meanwhile, in this picturesque vision of yours, the swimsuit itself seems to fit him like it would fit any (cough)_ female _swimsuit model – smooth and flat. Well, cut that out. Neku didn't exactly shave, to put it somewhat tactfully. Combine this with the _other_ obvious factor and you should probably understand that the bikini looked absolutely _awful_ on him. He was only blushing because... well, he knew Shiki got extra fusion stars from wearing something like this. More specifically, Neku remembered he had made Shiki wear one all the time for that very reason, and now... Yikes.

He briefly considered the bikini's top half and then promptly punched himself in the jaw for considering it.

The smiling daisy blouse could die in a fire.

Seersucker it was.

Even though he was dry by now, Neku made sure to exfoliate himself of the crusty exoskeleton using the crumpled-up maid outfit, and he wrung out his hair with the daisy blouse to get rid of the acid lurking deep inside. He took dim pleasure from the way the ugly garb hissed and bubbled and melted away into mush at the touch. But victory was bittersweet; when he had deigned himself acid-free to an extent, he slid the dress over his head.

Wriggling around until all limbs were in place, Neku pulled his gungy hair out of the dress's collar and glared at the patterned skirt kissing his kneecaps like a two-dollar whore.

He could stand to wear a dress for the time required it took to grasp Shibuya firmly by the ankles, hold it upside down and shake vigorously, and then pick through what fell out in search of boy clothes. If Pi Patel could find giraffes and orangutans, Neku figured he at least would be able to find a pair of shorts. After that, he would take great pleasure in throwing this godforsaken girly garment into the acid pits.

"What would Shiki think if she saw the mannequin I have become?" he muttered, rubbing his temples. The answer was obvious. "...Well, Neku, she'll never see you again if ya don't get home sometime soon."

And with that, he decided it was high time to get down to business.

"Come along, Bravo," he said as he stomped out of the alley. The clone nodded, crawling after him on all fours like a limping animal – or at least, a person who thoughthe was a limping animal. This was standard procedure for Neku units, who were accustomed to scuttling around in the shadows when they weren't being fussed over by Joshua packs, but it pissed Neku off. "Walk like a human, don't... don't creep around on the ground like that! It's disturbing."

"A-ah..."

The two walked away from 104.

Of course, nobody had noticed the pile of (male) clothes laying around near the entrance of the building; in the dark, it just looked like a pile of trash, so I suppose it's somewhat justifiable. But still, let us giggle knowingly behind our hands at the crippling irony of it all.

Hee. Hee.

* * *

So Neku and Bravo traversed Shibuya. "How very _riveting_," you may drawl, apathetically sipping your coffee and taking a haughty puff on a cig.

The sky seemed to flicker and pulse, stretched over their heads like a membranous, dark amber liquid. Like a quivering sheet of skin that jaundiced the night sky and rippled with haze, through which stars could thinly pierce. The streetlights that weren't busted bronzed the street with flickering gold pools of light, gathering clouds of moths and gnats and stuff. The rose-vines looked like dark and knotted tree roots, or gnarled hands, gripping handfuls of concrete as though it were as pliable as dough and digging twisted fingers into the walls.

Neku kept to the gold-husk shadows at first, but gradually he came to realize that the Joshua units were all either asleep in their hideaways or laying splayed on the ground in plain sight, snoring. Bravo simply followed Neku without paying much mind, his sharp toenails occasionally clicking against the ground. Gold roses twitched in dark corners, swiveling jerkily to track their progress through this smashed-up realm.

The clone's thoughts were of other things than our Neku's weird patterns of walking. As a defensive unit, Bravo was wont to follow. And Bravo had, by this point, already deduced that this Neku was defective on some count – the acid had probably damaged his brain circuitry or something – so his erratic and needless wandering in the shadows at this late hour was easily explained, even if it was exasperating. This Neku had come out of nowhere, raving about things that made no sense – composers made music, not Neku units – and was obviously off his rocker, but... he might make a tasty meal later on, who knows. Bravo would have to survey the defect's behavior for longer before he could be sure. Right now, though, the clone was altogether more interested in the twitching Joshua bodies laying on the sidewalk. Hey, he was hungry.

Our Neku paused for a moment to stretch, scratch at the back of his hair.

The defective Neku was dangerous, though. He was immune to the graywater. If he suddenly went berserk and attacked, Bravo could be burned by some of the residual acid left on the defect's skin, possibly to the point of bleeding. Blood painted you a bright red target. And so, Bravo hung back a safe ways, keeping his face nervous and meek-looking.

They continued on.

Our Neku was heading for AMX. You might question why he didn't go to Ramen Don first, but... Neku didn't really like Sho Minamimoto too much, for understandable reasons. He did, on the other hand, like Team Masa-Enojo-Aki-Ta, or at least the idea of the members. Neku figured it would be better to have some moral support behind him when he went back to Dogenzaka to confront the mad leather-clad lion of the math lesson. Besides, while Team MEAT seemed to have a degree of fighting experience between them as well as the advantage of numbers, Sho seemed to have little to offer other than his loud, unwanted-attention-grabbing gun and perhaps the odd bout of geometry tutoring.

Neku shivered in the night wind and warily glanced about him, bare feet stepping carefully over a fallen, sparking streetlight. Without the comfort of sunlight, the desolate waste of this Shibuya was deeply disturbing. The smashed-in windows of Center Street gouged at his eyes, a deep sense of wrongness permeating the air. Broiling shadows, spun through the city like black cobwebs, masked hidden faces and hid spidery fingers. Dark shadows flickered back and forth in the alleys, wide eyes occasionally glaring as the duo walked past. Our Neku noticed them, noticed the mats of dirty hair and the pallid, filth-covered skin, out of the corner of his eyes.

But none of his other doppelgangers ventured out of the darkness – they could smell the perfume of Pamela's sacrificial pits sticking to Neku like white on rice, and kept well away. He smelled like the Joshua units' little clubhouse – the one where they performed the sacrifices, of course. No, thanks. They would be keeping well away from that grimy piece of garbage.

At this point, Neku and Bravo found themselves before the hollowed bastion that was AMX. The entrance was bathed in dull effulgence, but everything above the goofy running guy on the sign was cast in amber darkness. Neku waded through the puddles of flickering yellow streetlight and clambered up the stairs to examine the store more closely, Bravo trailing after like a lingering stench. It was empty, or at least it certainly looked that way from the darkened windows – at the very least, it was definitely closed for business.

After a moment filled with pulling and straining and unabashedly coarse swearing, it was revealed that the door was locked, too.

Neku stepped away from the door, panting slightly. He crossed his arms angrily and _glared_.

For a while, it appeared as though he were either attempting to shame the door to opening or actually melt the lock off with the raw, furious power of his glowering eyeballs. Once he seemed to realize that physics refused to be cowed into submission this time, he huffed and whirled around, quickly pattering down the concrete stairs.

Bravo watched him with faint, muted curiosity stirring in the uncomputerized parts of his brain, even as he complained pitifully. "Mister door is stuck-stuck... uguu..." He suddenly burst into tears. "_W_-_Waaah...!_"

"Quit yer yapping," Neku growled out of the side of his mouth, emulating Popeye. He was searching for something, scalding the ground with his ferocious gaze, scanning every irregularity and liable hiding place. Unfortunately, it appeared that Team Meat took great pains to groom the area outside AMX of any debris whatsoever.

Suddenly, his face lit up at the sight of something on the other side of the road – a grocery bag sitting there, as coy as can be, plastic handles stirring weakly in the breeze.

Think about that for a second – there was wind, and yet the plastic bag was not moving. Indeed, it appeared to be quite solidly anchored in place, as if by some heavy weight. Neku grinned. _Perfect._

Neku quickly dashed over to the bag. Cradling it in his arms like a precious artifact, he scrambled back across the street and practically threw himself up the stairs, the rough pavement digging into the soles of his feet.

Bravo blinked the crocodile tears out of his eyes, his voice garbled and strained from the exhausting task of forcing an emotional breakdown. "W-Whach ij Nekyu doingch wich michter baj?" he blubbered out from under a thick curtain of snot, wiping the manufactured secretions from his puffy eyelids. "Ij ich michter schweejsh-schweejsh for Brabo-tan?"

Neku promptly smacked him. "Fool. Observe."

He held the bag out for Bravo to see. The contents were certainly not mister sweets-sweets. Contained within the abandoned plastic bag was a gallon of milk, nothing more. Never mind how expensive milk is in Japan – the stuff was well-expired anyway, and pungent clumps of salmonella were no doubt brewing in its curdled gut. Bravo blinked at the thing stupidly, sniffling.

"We cansh drinch dis," he whined.

Neku rolled his eyes.

He then proceeded to hold the bag in his hand like a traditional sling, and began to whirl it round and round as fast as he could. When it became as nothing more than a pallid smear of afterimages, Neku let it fly – and fly it did, smashing through the door of AMX with a deliciously satisfying report, spurting less-than-delicious rancid milk all over a rain of glass daggers.

The boy quickly shielded his face with his arms, while the clone just stood there, watching, even as a few small shards careened off in wild directions and became deeply wedged in his corneas. Bravo promptly summoned a fresh deluge of salt water, whimpering, and the glass was washed away.

Neku gave a low whistle. "I didn't think that would actually work, but... sweet!" He immediately ducked through the hole of jagged, milk-covered glass, pinching his nose shut. His skirt got all wet.

"That ich not chanitary," Bravo grumbled in disgust, but he followed anyway.

The soulless, milk-wasting ginger stepped gingerly through the puddle, then immediately proceeded to wipe the soles of his feet off on the nearest mousepad. "...This _isn't _sanitary," he mumbled, disgruntled by the revolting smell. Bravo didn't bother to clean off his filthy feet and so proceeded to track milky footprints all over the place for several minutes.

And so, they headed toward the back of the store, toward the wall of junk tied up with police tape.

"Hey!" Neku shouted. "Meatheads!"

Bravo's stomach growled and he whined pitifully, leaning against a nearby CD display.

The cavernous belly of AMX echoed slightly, rows and rows of music stations standing apathetically before him. The shaft of dull streetlight pouring in from the doorway pierced the darkness for a flimsy fifteen feet, but the rest of the store was blacker than creamless coffee and decidedly gloomy-looking. In the entire store, there wasn't a sound to be heard.

Neku scowled and tried again. "_Hey! Hello!_"

Silence.

Bravo rolled his eyes. Suddenly, a CD whistled through the darkness and – SHUNK – imbedded itself deep into the meat of the clone's cheek.

The clone stood there, stunned, eyes widening. "What is... this...?" he mumbled, pulling the CD out of his flesh. It stuck there for a few tugs but eventually slid out with a wet_ shllk_, and Bravo spent the next second examining the strange object, heedless of the blood pouring out of the gaping wound in his face.

Neku turned around, saw Bravo. A feeling of dark premonition lanced his guts - "B-Bravo! GET DOWN!"

"Huh?"

The boy tackled his clone to the ground just in time – the display Bravo had been reclining against was suddenly riddled with Aerosmith's entire discography. Neku tensely pushed himself off the clone's chest, wondering vaguely why the ground was suddenly flooded with dull pink light. He needn't have dwelt on it.

"Close enough to kiss... kyaa, Bravo's first... you pervert," the blushing clone muttered shyly, blood spurting out of the side of his head and puddling disgustingly on the dirty floor. Their heads were indeed in close proximity, and for the first time Neku noticed that Bravo's breath smelled like rotting flesh. Disturbed at the surreal sight, our hero's brain briefly shut down.

A wake up call was administered in the form of what looked like a roughly-hewn wooden club crashing down inches from the two's collective left ear, accompanied by a loud, lispy curse. Neku squeaked, grabbed Bravo in his arms and barrel-rolled out of the way at light speed.

"Agh...! YOU! THTUPID! _NEKUTH!_"

"Uwaa!" Bravo murmured. "Such a man... ehee~..."

For a brief moment the sparse light caught on a pair of slightly-crooked glasses. Glasses that were approaching uncomfortably fast, glinting murderously.

"Now is not the time to be _cute_, or whatever you're trying to be," Neku spat at Bravo, as if the concept of cute itself was poisonous, poisonous poison. "Now is the time to _run_."

The two scrambled to their feet and ran like headless chickens for the exit.

"Yeth, RUN! _COWARDTH!_" The heavy patter of water shoes against the ground informed Neku that the shemale was basically inches away – he glanced behind his shoulder and WHOOPS – his/her grimacing face was literally a foot from his, snarling like a mother grizzly in the throes of a berserker rage. Suffice it to say Neku's heart attempted a suicidal escape through the mouth. _Ohshitohfuckohshitohfuck-!_

Panicking, he threw himself blindly to the right, crashing painfully into a music display and crushing his ribs into a sharp plastic corner. The air drained from his lungs like water from a popped balloon. "GUH-!" It didn't help that he fell to the ground almost immediately after. Hitting the ground, he didn't linger in his agony – gritting his teeth, he clambered desperately to his feet and kept running, staggering like a blind drunk and crashing into things at every possible turn.

Shemale kept after him, roaring. "WAKE ME UP WHEN I'M GETTING MY BEAUTY THLEEP, WILL YOU? FUCKIN' GINGER BATHTARDS-"

"I-It's not natural!" Neku moaned, clutching his bruised entirety. "I swear!"

"_LIKE RATH IN MY LUCKY CHARMS-_"

Suddenly Neku smacked into a wall of flesh.

He fell to the ground with a bump, crashing into the androgyne's shins and causing him/her to catapult over his head, smashing into something with a terrific noise. It was too dark to tell exactly what.

_Never mind her... him... it_, Neku thought irritably, scuttling backwards blindly. _What did _I_ run into?_

"YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO _YO_, MAN!"

_...Oh._

A skateboard slammed down in the immediate area – Neku felt the whoosh of air kiss his calves – and suddenly it became apparent that Neku was nose-deep in the kill zone. The skinny boy launched himself to his feet and ran back where he came from, narrowly avoiding the Bito's path of destruction. (Bravo was all but forgotten at this point.)

"S-stop! Beat! It's me!" CRASH! "F-from yesterday!" SMASH! "You gave me a computer – AGH!" SIS-BOOM-BASH! "Su-Su-Sushi pins! And a c-coupon! A PROMOTIONAL COUPON-" The rough edge of the skateboard scraped Neku's back in a wide, white arc of pain. "...AAAAAH!"

"Your kind took may SHIFTER," Beat gargled. It took his crippled lexicon a few minutes to warm up after being roused from slumber. "NO SYMPHONY."

Neku ran and ran and - "EEP!" was intercepted by the faint _whikka whikka _of compact discs slicing the air in front of his nose into wafer-thin membranes. Masanori Ito emerged from the shadows, looking every bit like the boss.

"All right," Masa snapped. "Everybody STOP. What's all this racket about?"

Beat ceased his rampage – well, actually, he just diverted his latest swing to crash into the headphones instead of Phones himself, since it was basically unstoppable. Predictably, the flimsy audio device exploded – didn't even have a chance.

Neku's legs gave out at the blasphemous sight and he fell to his knees. "N-Not the 'phones! _Gghk_-"

He proceeded to gargle incoherently for a moment.

"Entrepreneur!" Beat barked hoarsely, a vein in his neck bulging. "Enterpriser! Epicure!" He paused here to rub his eyes and yawn. "I... Interloper? Uh..."

Shemale roughly shoved Beat's back out of the way and stuck his/her ambiguous head into the partial beam of streetlight. "Intruder! I, I think he meanth intruder!"

Masa shook his hands, as if through his jostling fingers he could somehow scatter a field of meditative state of mind. "Everyone! Calm down!" His cold eyes glinted as they fell upon our Neku, who was sitting on the ground and looking dazed. "An intruder, huh? After our PRICELESS TREASURES, perhaps?" Masa cocked his CD-launcher, pointed it at our Neku's vegetative face.

"N-No," Neku blurted, coming back to reality all of a sudden. "I'm the dude from yesterday! You already gave me a computer, dumbass! Quit attacking me!"

"I discreenctly remember _that _Neku wasn' wearin' no _duress_," Beat sniffed, poking Neku gingerly with his toe, the way one might poke an interesting specimen of roadkill to see if the guts come out.

"I would have remembered THAT," Shemale added, a bit too eagerly.

Neku scowled. "I'm... oh... this," he murmured, embarrassment quickly flooding his capillaries with the blistering heat of a bazllion pastry ovens. "Uh, this can be explained..."

Masa sighed in a gravelly sort of way, massaging his temple. "What are you _doing_ here? At this hour? In _that_ getup?"

"Um-um-um! Mithter Ito!" Shemale waved his hands around in a way identical to how Shiki Misaki did. "There were TWO intruderth!"

This seemed to change everything. Masa looked up all of a sudden, his face contorting in a dark scowl. "What did you thay – I mean, say?"

"I thaid," Shemale reiterated, sounding kind of testy. "Thith degenerate let in another one of hith kind to our building_ after hourth!_ He'th a double-crothing thcoundrel, a backthtabbing betrayer!" Dramatic pause! "H-He probably wanth to thteal everything and _pee on the carpet!_"

Neku whirled around to look at him/her, aghast. "I WAS FOUR, okay? Quit bringing it up!"

Suddenly Masa swooped down and grabbed Neku by the, er, blouse, shaking him violently. Neku's teeth rattled until his brain was basically reduced to well-stirred oatmeal. "_Did you bring a clone in with you?_"

"Uh... yeah?"

Masa dropped Neku and descended upon Shemale. "AND DID YOU CHASE IT?"

Shemale straightened his/her back, indignant. "Y-Yeth! But that'th my job, to keep intruderth-"

"You _idiot._" Masa spoke with deadly precision, panic audibly gripping his throat. "_YOU LISPING IDIOT!_"

"Uh," said Neku, slowly. "What's the big deal? These guys are harmless-"

All of a sudden a bloodcurdling scream could be heard from somewhere nearby.

"Shit," Masa murmured, eyes widening until they somewhat resembled flying saucers. "Shit! Where's Shinta?"

"He's asleep -"

"Where, oh, for the love of the gods, WHERE IS HIS ALLIGATOR?"

There was heard the rending sound of metal being ripped from metal. And then, a dull whistle as an entire display case went soaring over their heads, crashing into the aisle behind them with an absolutely devastating CRASH!

All eyes carefully turned, as one, to the thrower of said display case.

The answer to Masa's question pierced the air in Jesse David Corti's dulcet tones.

"IT'S BITING MY FOOT!" Bravo shrieked.

He stood, silhouetted in the gold-dust streetlight leaking from the windows, eyes as white as the puddle of rancid milk pooling around his clawed toes. Flecks of foam frothed from the corners of his mouth.

"Did he just throw the-?"

"Yes, Neku. He just threw the entire Country section at us."

And indeed, the baby alligator was clamped onto Bravo's left foot like a vice. The clone's blank eyes began to tear up and he wailed:

"IT... _HURRRRTS!_"

"Wh-what's happening-?" Neku cried, flabbergasted that the blushing fool could rip an entire section of store directly out of the ground, never mind use it _as a projectile_.

Masa looked grim. "To put it simply, he's... flipping the fuck out."

Bravo gnashed his sharpened teeth, clawed at his eyes and moaned like a trapped animal. "I... don't like it! I DON'T LIKE IT! IT _HUUUUURTS!_ IT HURTS IT HURTS_IT HURTS IT HURTS-_"

He abruptly swung his taloned fingers downward, grabbed the baby alligator by the tail, and brutally ripped the poor thing in half with a strangled wail. Reptilian blood went everywhere, glistening viscera splattering onto the milky ground with a disgusting series of _fwop_s. And so, in that most Kodak of moments, Bravo became completely inhuman.

The clone's glassy, frenzied eyes turned to the shell-shocked group of stunned AMX employees and our protagonist.

It howled.

"_You... you hurt me... I'm... i'M gOiNG tO HURT YOU!_"

Neku looked at Masa.

Masa looked at Shemale.

Shemale looked at Beat.

Beat looked tired.

_...Whelp._

* * *

**A/N:** TWO MONTH HIATUS HORY SHIT WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME

GOTTA GET BACK ON MY GAME BRO

GOTTA

GOTTA DO IT

I, I

I HAVE FAILED THEE, ONII-SAN

FOOOOORGIIIIIVEEEEE I HAVE DISHONORED -seppuku-


End file.
